Christmas in Cokeworth
by Rosaria Marie
Summary: A loose sequel to "Harry Potter and the Road Trip to Remember" (still in progress), about Harry being forced to spend Christmas with Severus Snape in Cokeworth during his second year. Features a blend of humor, drama, and just a tuft of holiday fluff.
1. Chapter 1: Pretty Little Snowflake

Chapter 1: Pretty Little Snowflake

Harry Potter grumbled as he rummaged through the random useless junk that littered Professor Severus Snape's attic. Doing this sort of work was drudgery as it was, but doing it under orders from his least favorite teacher ever was worse. But this was not the first time circumstances had thrown the two off-beat cohabitators haphazardly together.

After being kicked out of his aunt's house back in the summer, the boy had been forced to spend the night under Snape's roof before embarking on a maniacal road trip with him that ended in pandemonium and a summer spent in Hagrid's shack before the school season reopened. Having settled back into their usual antagonistic routine, they both had assumed that they would mercifully be spared a repeat of the too-close-for-comfort interaction.

Unfortunately, however, when Christmas rolled around, Harry once again had nowhere to go, and while he would ordinarily have just staked out at the school, long overdue finances had just come in for long-needed interior redesign, and Headmaster Albus Dumbledore decided to shut down the school for the holidays to implement the monetary supplements. Realizing the issue with Harry's placement, he had once again summoned Professor Snape as a last ditch effort.

If it were possible for the potions master to be in a more hostile and cantankerous mood than usual, he achieved it during Christmastime. Needless to say, the prospect of having Potter forced upon him for the holidays did nothing to ease his intense brooding. He protested the imposition bitterly, and railed against the headmaster's failure to find him suitable accommodations elsewhere. But again, with everyone else traveling somewhere for Christmas, they could not commit to taking Harry in. So in the end he had been somehow persuaded to accept the unwanted assignment.

Afterwards, Dumbledore had cheerfully tipped off Harry that Snape sank into some very "black moods" during festive seasons (like…blacker than usual…which of course was difficult to even fathom), and should really take medication for it, but of course, he was too proud to admit to suffering depression. Hence, Harry might want to do his best not to rouse his ire while stuck in his house.

True to prediction, Snape had grown increasingly more sullen, snappy, snide, and generally impossible to function around since Harry arrived and Christmas Day approached. Still he had managed to keep the boy busy by barking marching orders left and right to do various "chores" around the house lest he demonstrate any signs of laziness, "just like your father." It was his all-time favorite refrain, which was really starting to grind. But Harry did want to go on living, so he decided it prudent to just let it go.

Why Snape had decided to launch "spring cleaning" in his attic during Christmas break was beyond the 12-year-old, and what he hoped to achieve from it was even more obscure. His rickety house was in shambles, he never had company (barring the rare, unwelcome student foisted on him with no rational alternatives offered), and there was really nothing of much value to hock, if he intended to make any extra cash to go towards feeding his cranky cat and creepy Venus flytrap growing in a pot on the bathroom sink.

Amidst the debris and dead insect population, Harry discovered a high pile of assorted bins and boxes he was expected to sort through. But as soon as he touched this little brother of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the whole structure gave up the ghost and collapsed in a heap. He groaned as he snatched up the smallest item first, which happened to be a shoebox from the 1960's.

"Great," Harry mumbled to himself. "Please don't tell me I've just rediscovered his first pair of shoes or something…"

Thankfully, upon opening the lid, he found this was not the case. Instead, he found himself staring bewildered, at a charming little collection of glitter-laden Christmas cards.

"Snape…cards?" he queried in disbelief, starting to pull them out. There were six of them in total, all with different pictures on the front, and always with copious amounts of glitter. He thumbed through them quickly, and the sparkly stuff rubbed off on his fingers. They all seemed decidedly homemade, with colorful ribbons laced along the edges.

He flipped open one with a reindeer on the front and a strange singed mark in the corner, as if it had been touched by fire. The remaining handwriting was that of a young girl. He squinted to make out the message, or what was left of it:

 **"…** **want us to go ice-skating. Don't worry about the others! We'll go ourselves…"**

 **"…** **fun, and you'll do fine. Don't you love the snow? It's so sparkly…"**

 **"…** **hope you like it! I drew it myself…it's our deer, Sevy!"**

 **"…** **Your very best friend, Lily…"**

 _Oh, then it was from…his mum. Hagrid's photo albums had indicated that Snape and his mother had been friends once…but looking at the cards…he suddenly realized…just how much…_

Suddenly Harry felt something smack into his ear and nearly knock him over with the force of impact, causing the cards to fall all over the attic floor.

"You... _fiend_ …you…" It was Snape, and Harry saw a look of sheer fury in his eyes, something wild and untamed that unnerved the boy.

"I didn't do anything…"

"Silence!" He shoved Harry hard against the pile of boxes. "I know you…I know what you were doing…you don't touch them, you hear?!"

Snape was kneeling on the ground now, frantically snatching up the cards, as if he expected someone to try and steal them. "Bloody hell…Gryffindor…swine…I'll teach you to…"

Harry's patience snapped. "You're more the swine than me!" he blurted, one hand clamped over his throbbing ear. "You're a cruel, horrible person just looking for someone to blame for how miserable you are!"

"Stop…" Snape's fists were clenched.

"No wonder no one wants to come near you! My mum was probably the only one who ever bothered sending you cards, or even cared whether you lived or…"

In some sudden, terrifying motion, Snape had grabbed Harry by the collar and had him up against the wall. For a second, the boy was genuinely afraid. The man's dark eyes seemed as black and fathomless as the ocean on a starless night. Then he saw him swallow…an awkward swallow, as if just coming to one's senses in the nick of time…and Snape released his stranglehold. He clutched the cards he had in his other hand harder against his chest.

"Your record, boy…is scraped raw when we return to the school," he growled, but the strength was out of him. His eyes seemed more scared than threatening now. He was like an animal just previously foaming at the mouth with rage, who just now realized he was hurt and could think of nothing but getting away from the hurt. And so he did, retreating from the attic in fast order, and taking the cards with him.

Harry didn't know what to think, what to say, but the intensity of the experience left him with a queasy feeling and a prickling sensation in his eyes. He wanted to hate the man, but the way he had clutched those cards…it was an act of desperation, like a starving person trying to grab at scraps off the streets. And somehow seeing his hurt, even if he inflicted it on others often enough, made Harry hurt too.

Two days passed, Christmas Eve came, and Snape was agitated. It seemed as if he was running on something automatic, some gear shift that made him want to work on…anything, everything, yell at somebody, everybody…put them to work, at least, keep them out of his hair, but within shouting distance. The boy was back up in the attic. They hadn't spoken to each other in complete sentences since the stramash over the cards. Snape regretted going as ballistic as he had, realizing it could be interpreted as a sign of weakness, but was far too proud to ever apologize.

He just had to get away from thinking too much about the time, or the day, or the year, and how quiet everything got, and the way everything in the house seemed to come alive, and how if a curtain blew in the wind or a bit of ice struck the window he would jump. He would start imagining things, like the face of the Dark Lord manifesting itself in the shadows, and the ghosts of his parents fighting in the kitchen again. No matter how he tried to tend it, his old childhood home was unkind to him. He wanted to get out of it, but there was nowhere to go.

So he busied himself as best he was able, straightening things up, and fixing the cushions on his ancient sofa Harry had been using to sleep on. Seeing the way the boy kept it in a constant state of messiness annoyed him to no end.

But then…his hand ran something under the pillow. It felt like…a card. His throat tightened. Had the nasty brat stolen one of the cards after all? But no…no this was a different card…with lots of glitter, forming a snowflake, and glitter ink addressing it to him on the inside:

 **Dear Professor Snape,**

 **Okay, so I know you're probably going to hate this card, and the glitter snowflake on the front. In fact, you'll most likely hit me in the side of the head with it. But that's okay, because I'd still give this to you anyway, even if you tear it up into so many little pieces and toss it on the fire. That's because, in spite of everything, I do wish you could have a happy Christmas. Really, truly I do. And believe it or not, I would never hurt your stuff on purpose, especially special stuff. I'm not that much of a crumb.**

 **Your Least Favorite Student Ever,**

 **Henry James Potter**

Snape just stared and stared and stared at the card in his hands, seemingly as frozen as the snowflake it depicted. But his mind was turning like a rusty wheel.

 _I hate you, you sniveling brat… I hate you and your sentimental drivel, and the way you talk and walk and everything about you…I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…_

He felt a sudden pain in his gut, and found himself clutching the card tight against him, the glitter dusting his cloak.

 _I hate glitter_ – his mental resolve was faltering – _and snowflakes. I wish they'd all melt and Christmas would die. I hate it…it hurts…why must everything…hurt?_

Just then, Harry wandered into the sitting room, and Snape jerked to his feet, the card still clutched in his hand, and his eyes burning with intensity. Harry felt a rush of panic. This might have sent the disturbed man over the edge. And the boy knew he hadn't been taking his medication like he was supposed to according to the prescription.

"I…I didn't know you'd find it…so soon," Harry stammered. "It was meant to be…a surprise."

Snape just glowered at him for a long time, then swallowed something back. "You…" His voice was shaking from some emotion, and Harry could not tell what it was. Was it hatred, or…? He doubted if even Snape knew.

But when the man took a step towards him, Harry shrank back, unsure what to expect.

 _Was he planning on hugging him, or pulverizing him? Almost certainly the latter…_

The boy's reaction seemed to alter whatever Snape's intent had been, and after a moment of awkwardly staring down at the floor, he stormed off in the opposite direction, with the card still in his hand, and locked himself in his room.

Harry exhaled. At least he was still breathing…for now. The card surprise may have gone over like a lead balloon, but at least he was still alive to talk about it.

Christmas morning dawned bleak, as was appropriate for the surroundings, and Harry dressed sluggishly, not expecting anything much in the way of activity. He'd probably just be put to work cleaning potion bottles out in the shed or organizing books alphabetically on the shelves.

But when he wandered out to the main room, he beheld something that stopped him in his tracks. Snape was sitting stiffly on a chair, his chin resting in his hand, and his eyes were on the front window sill...now decorated with Lily's cards, and in the middle, Harry's snowflake one.

"You…put them up," he blurted in near disbelief, gazing at the glittery cards lined up so that some would face inward and some outward for any passersby who might just happen to look in.

Snape lowered his eyes, clearly embarrassed at what might be interpreted as a show of weakness on his part. But it was also clear by the soft haze in his eyes that he was drawing some small pleasure in looking at his work, and the thought that other people might just look as well.

"They look…really nice," the boy offered to ease the tension. "Y'know… really pretty, all together like that."

"Clearly you and your mother shared a similar taste…for glitter," he mumbled.

"Yeah, I guess so." Harry smiled a little. "It's nice and sparkly, especially now that the sun's coming out a bit."

Snape gazed at the way the sparkle-reflective light revealed the particles of dust floating in the room. "I…know you hate being here…almost as much as I hate…having you," he stated lowly. "But…all the same…" He looked up at the boy, and his eyes were pained. He was struggling to say something words could not do justice to, something he was untrained to express. "I've discovered…that I don't…hate you," he managed. "Not…in the strict definition of the word at least. I've wanted to, very badly. But…hatred is a stretch. I'm just…not keen on you. Understand?"

"Yeah," Harry nodded. "Likewise."

Snape rolled his eyes. "Always have a smart answer, don't you, boy?"

"Well, I try."

"You do." Snape stared at him again. "Attempting to relay season's greetings at this point would fall terribly flat, so I'm not going to do it. All I can say is…I wish you could have had your holiday accommodations of choice…far away from here. But as it is…" His eyes flitted towards the door awkwardly. "I'm…going out. So you can have the house to yourself without any…oppressive ethos destroying whatever level of festive spirit you may have in reserve." He started putting on his overcoat by the door.

"Can't I come with you?" Harry asked.

Snape paused with one arm in the coat and the other out. "Why in the name of Merlin do you want to do that?"

"Because…it's creepy around here all by myself," he mumbled. "And…I don't want to be all alone for Christmas."

"Don't want to be alone, eh?" he scoffed. "One can get used to it. How do you think I've been living day in and day out?"

"Well, maybe that's why you're so…" Harry stopped himself before going too far.

Snape dead-eyed him. "Effervescent?" he droned.

Harry shrugged. "People need each other after a while, that's all."

Snape sighed and headed over to his closet. He rummaged around in there for a spell, then yanked out a smaller, rather worn and grubby overcoat, with stains and patches everywhere. "It'll have to do for you, boy," he declared, tossing it to Harry. "Come, get it on. We don't have all day."


	2. Chapter 2: Sing of the Wildwood

Chapter 2: Sing of the Wildwood

Going walking with Snape through the barren Cokeworth woods was not exactly Harry's Christmas activity of choice. But it was either that or being shut up in the house all day with no sign of light or life. Besides, he had always been slightly curious about what the professor did out there on his walks that sometimes spanned hours at a time.

It was frosty outside early in the morning, and breath turned to puffs of vapor as they both wandered silently between the spindly trees. Harry lagged behind him a little so as not to accidentally incur his ire by reminding him of his existence. Neither one seemed particularly keen on trying to communicate with the other; indeed, it was mutually convenient to simply ignore the other's presence.

But as Snape reached a white willow tree, tendrils frozen like long icy fingers, he muttered under his breath, "Willow bark…boil it with marsh mallow…makes tea for joint pain and stomach ailments…"

He seemed to babbling more to himself than Harry, but the boy thought it best to nod anyway, just in case he was deciding to give him an impromptu lesson of some sort and was waiting to jump down his throat if he didn't respond properly.

"The deer used to strip it off in winter," he continued mundanely. "Kept them alive after the first frost. They're all gone now…"

"What happened to them?" Harry queried, forgetting that Snape had virtually forgotten he was there.

Snape jerked his gaze onto him, obviously slightly disconcerted by the realization he was not, in fact, talking to himself alone. "They left with the trees," he answered bleakly, looking around at the hacked-down stumps not far off. "And…the spirit of the ones who cared for them." He straightened his overcoat on his back. "I'll show you something."

Harry blinked in surprise at this statement as Snape motioned for him to follow him along a shortcut out of the woods that ended at the foot of a steep hill.

"We're going up," Snape declared, and even though Harry didn't feel like that high of a hike, he thought it best not to argue. It was rare for his teacher to be in this docile of a mood, and he really didn't want to disrupt it and ruin Christmas altogether.

At the top, there was an old oak tree, with naked looming branches, overlooking Cokeworth in the valley below like some sort of voiceless sentinel left untouched by time and unloved by the season.

"It's…a nice view," Harry tried, looking down at the smoke rising from the chimneys of the town.

"It's a horrible view," Snape snapped. "A nasty view of a nasty factory dump where a nasty teacher lives in a nasty, haunted house; isn't that what you're thinking, Potter?"

Harry shrugged. "I think…I'm getting used it all a little better."

Snape exhaled. "I…I didn't bring you here to analyze the locale. I just…wanted to tell you that your mother would come here often. In the winter, she used to hang ribbons and food for the animals on this tree." He stared at it intently, then glared back at the town below. "She was the only thing to come out of this place that wasn't beyond salvation."

Harry moved closer to the tree, and very gingerly ran his hand along the bark, almost as if it were some sort of relic. "So she was the spirit who cared for the deer?"

Snape winced a little, then nodded. "They were her favorite of all the animals." His eyes drifted to the ground. "I remember once…one doe ate oats right out of her hand, not afraid of her at all. They knew her and they trusted her. She lent them a touch of kindness in a cruel world."

Harry smiled at the thought. "Thanks…for telling me that. I mean, you didn't have to."

Snape shrugged. Then his eyes fell on the ugly, oversized, ancient coat he had lent Harry from out of his closet for the trek. "Zipper that thing up all the way. You'll catch your death out here."

"But the zipper's stuck," Harry protested.

Snape rolled his eyes. "Of course, it's stuck. It's always gotten stuck. But the mettle of the wearer is judged by their ability to get it unstuck."

Harry huffed and started fiddling with it. After a few minutes of vain effort, he felt Snape yank his hands away and start fiddling with it himself. He seemed to be something of an expert at dealing with it, and got it unstuck in good order.

"You're…pretty good at that," Harry complimented.

Snape widened his eyes dramatically, and in a voice laden with sarcasm, he confided, "Hidden talent." He scanned the coat. "It was either that or freeze to death in the day."

"So…this was yours?"

"Who did you expect it belonged to? The Prince of Wales?"

"No, I mean…I guess…I never thought I'd wind up wearing…y'know, your clothes."

"Factory smudges and patches, not good enough for a high and mighty Potter with your high and mighty Grindewalt's account, is that it?" he sneered.

"No, not it at all!" Harry blurted, exasperated. "It's…actually kind of cool, in its own way."

Snape looked dumbfounded. "Your brain must be crystallizing."

"I mean…it's so uncool, it sort of flies off the scale, comes back around, and becomes cool again," Harry attempted to explain, running his hand along the patches.

Snape's eyes looked like they were glazing over. "Come on, wonder boy, let's get back before I have to borrow a hair dryer to thaw out your frozen mental capacities…whatever levels may have existed to begin with, that is."

Wandering back through the woods caused Snape to open up a little more, muttering this or that about the properties of certain types of roots and berries, and what animals foraged for them. Of Lily's attachment to holly, and how she had once tucked a piece in her red hair. He talked about how old the woods were, some trees dating back before even the founding of Hogwarts. Once, it had been said witches had made a special potion to shorten the winter's endurance and thaw a lover's icy heart with honey, a certain rare type of purple mushroom, and the bark from one such ancient tree. It was an old wives' tale, he added quickly, but Lily had enjoyed the story, and would often go searching for the special tree lost to history.

He was just talking, in his usual monotone, but not half as threatening as it usually was, as if he was finally starting to become comfortable with his own voice, just a little. He was talking, and Harry was listening, and realizing that when Snape relaxed a little he could be fairly interesting. If anything, he was not coming off as aggressive, but actually rather soft-spoken, even slightly shy. He wondered, was some of the bluster covering that?

For once, there was this strange sense of mutual safety, as opposed to disdain or trepidation, where they were both coexisting together, perhaps not on good terms, but not on bad ones either. In that little space of time, they were not friends, but they were not enemies. It was a sense of tacit belonging, and Harry found himself basking in it.

 _So…perhaps this was Snape's weird attempt at a Christmas present. He was trying to be human with the boy…still distant, laid-back, low-tone…but decidedly more human…_

And then in an instant everything was ruined.

Something white flashed through the air from nowhere and struck Snape squarely in the mouth. Harry jerked back as if a shot had been fired, while his teacher bit back a strangled yelp and pressed a hand over his mouth, his whole body going rigid. Off to the side in the clearing, there was children's laughter and taunting. Nasty little rhymes about the vampire living in the house on the hill…

The old Snape was back in force, his eyes gleaming like steel. He snapped his gaze on Harry, who was just staring with mouth agape. "Stop glowering at me, you damned boy!" Then he turned in the direction of the attack. "Bloody…brats…I'll teach you…" he growled, stalking off in their direction, and successfully scattering and sending them bolting for cover into the woods.

A second later, something fell down from the tree and dangled in front of his face. It was a cord with a small stuffed manikin, covered over in bits of a black plastic garbage bag, with a beer can attached. Snape stared at it for a long moment, blankly, then with a viper-like strike, he swiped it all down and cast it into the snow bank, a hard swear rising from his throat.

Harry didn't know what to do, so he turned his eyes to the snow. And that's when he saw bits of something shiny, something other than ice. He knelt down and cupped the shards in his hand. They were tiny and tinged slightly red…

"Facry grass," Snape mumbled, making Harry jump up with a start at the realization that his teacher had returned.

"What…?"

"FACTORY GLASS." His words were hard, forced, intensely clear. And Harry saw a trickle of blood down his lip. "Packed in snowballs…it's a tradition around here, you see. Quite an old one."

"But…why? That's awful…"

"Because…it causes… _pain_ ," he explained haltingly. "Isn't that the source…of all sorts of pleasure…to corner something you think very wicked…and make it…twitch, and suffer, and be at your mercy?"

Snape closed his eyes to a flood of horrible memories, of being mocked and bullied and shoved and scraped and hit just because…he existed. He was there, and he reminded everyone of something bad, apparently. He was the symbol of everyone's own personal evil. And so they could get out of church on Christmas morning and go off to be little St. Georges after their own personal dragon…and make him bleed…

 _But Lily hadn't seen him like that. No, Lily had liked him when they were both young and innocent of what the future had in store for them. She'd asked him out skating, and invited him to Christmas parties, and took him up to feed the animals with her. And she'd told him he wasn't evil. That he was good deep down, even with all his faults taken into account. She'd even introduced him to her friend, the doe who ate of her hand, and he'd been able to touch her nose without her running away…and she'd said…deer could always judge goodness inside…_

Harry carefully drew closer to Snape. "Are…are you okay?"

He shrugged, but there was a shiver in it. "Don't tell me you didn't enjoy that."

"I didn't!"

"I know you did…"

"You can't know anything of the sort!"

"Shut up, just…" He clamped his hand to his mouth again, and slurred, "Need…get home…swelling…"

With that, he staggered off through the woods, with Harry following, heavy-hearted, at a distance.


	3. Chapter 3: Up on the Housetop

Chapter 3: Up on the Housetop

Harry waited on the couch as Snape tried to ease the swelling on his lower lip with a cold cloth and rinsed his mouth out with a combination of wintergreen and witchhazel in the bathroom. When he emerged, the lip seemed to have stopped bleeding, but the swelling was still evident.

"Would…would you like me to…go back up and sort anything…in the attic?" Harry inquired hesitantly.

"I really…don't care," Snape shrugged him off. "Just…stay out of my way."

His words somehow stung Harry like never before, and when Snape went off into the kitchen, the boy felt the unreasoning instinct to cry. Because…he had found himself enjoying their walk, in spite of himself…and he hadn't thrown the stupid snowball anyway. Why should he be blamed for the ambush?

Just then, Harry felt the rub of an Angora cat against his leg. "Angelfang," he addressed her gently, urging her up onto the couch with him. She could often be grouchy and aloof, but she seemed to like Harry much better than Snape's previous cat, Bastet.

It appeared she sensed his need, curling up against his tummy and letting him bury his face in her fluffy white fur. He hugged her and petted her all the way from her back to the tip of her tail, and let a few soft sobs escape him, still pressed up against the fluff.

"Don't pull her tail," came Snape's voice from the doorway of the kitchen.

Harry shot up his head, hoping his tears weren't visible. "Of course not," he choked. "She's my friend."

It was evident from the look on Snape's face that he had indeed taken note of Harry's emotional state, but wasn't sure how best to react.

"Want…tea?" he queried at last. "I'm making it for myself, anyway."

Harry blinked. "Sure, I guess."

Snape nodded and turned back to the kitchen. Then he added over his shoulder, "Care for toast with it?"

Harry stalled, contemplating how Snape always burnt toast to a crisp.

"Well, do you or don't you?" he demanded impatiently. "I don't have all day."

 _Why did he keep saying that? Harry wondered. It's not like either of them had any major plans for the next 24 hours of holiday cheer…_

But nevertheless, he decided to accept the offer of toast with a nod.

When lunch was finally served, Snape placed a tray of tea and toast on the end table and sat himself down on the far side of the couch across from Harry. Then he started pouring the tea very ceremoniously for both of them.

"Cream?" he intoned.

"Mm-hmm," Harry accepted.

"There's no sugar here," he noted. "But there is honey. Good for the throat and preventing colds in bad weather. Want it?"

"Sure."

Snape very carefully took out the honey stick from the small pot, balanced it on the edge of the cup, and slowly let it drizzle in.

"This is a really nice tea set," Harry commented. And even though it was a bit scraped up and chipped in places, he meant the compliment sincerely. It looked like something from an old magazine about life in the Victorian Era.

"Inheritance item," Snape explained simply, "from the Prince Family."

"Prince?"

"Maternal maiden name." He looked over the set, and a searching look crept into his eyes, as if something wasn't quite complete. "There used to be more cups and saucers, but…unfortunately they suffered mass collisions." What he really meant was that his father had smashed them in one of his rants while his mother sobbed, watching the destruction of her grandmother's precious china. "Two others have disappeared in the distant confines of the local pawn shop. But…it matters little. In case you've noticed, hosting social teas is not exactly my forte."

"But you seem to be really good at setting up the tea and stuff, and pouring it and all," Harry offered.

Snape looked slightly amused at this effort of giving him his due. "I am trained to do things…properly."

"Yeah, you do that real good."

" _Very_ good, Potter," Snape emphasized, pointing out his breach of grammar.

"Yeah…umm…yes."

The professor lifted the teacup gingerly to his sore mouth and let the heat of the drink soothe it a little.

"You should try some ice on it," Harry suggested.

"I do believe ice to be the culprit, and therefore illegitimized as a cure," Snape retorted.

Harry turned his eyes down. "I wish…I could have thrown a snowball back at them. For wrecking our walk."

Snape looked dumbfounded. "Given the chance you…you would have been on their side, without question."

"That's not true."

"Come off it, Potter! For you, walking in the woods with… _the dungeon bat_ …must have been the most lackluster Christmas activity you could conceive of."

Harry blanched at hearing Snape use the students' derogatory nickname for him out loud. The kids had always taken pains to keep him from hearing it outright for self-preservatory purposes, but their teacher obviously had sharp ears. "Nah," Harry exhaled. "I…I liked having someone…talk to me like that."

Snape snorted. "You probably don't remember half of what was said."

"Willow bark and marshmallow help with stomach aches and joint pain," he recited. "And some of the trees in the woods here are very old, all the way back to the Norman Conquest, and there's a legend about magic bark that thaws out winter…"

"And lovers' hearts," his teacher added quietly.

"Yeah, them too."

Snape stared into his teacup. "So why don't you listen in class like that, genius one?"

"Well…you don't talk to me in class like that," he ventured to explain. "It's like…you want me to mess up in there."

"What?!" Snape snapped, causing Harry to jump a little. "Now you're blaming your flagrant incompetence on _me_?"

"No, it's just…well, you seem to sort of…want to prove how lazy or stupid you think I am, or something, in front of the whole class. That's bound to make anyone get nerved out."

"Then why haven't you used whatever head you have and gone out of your way to prove me wrong in front of the class?" Snape dared him. "Study hard, pay attention, and quit with chitter-chatter and wisecracks."

"But Hermione's smart, and studies like there's no tomorrow, and always knows the answers, and you still don't like her."

Snape sighed. "Your little Gryffindor girlfriend happens to be an insufferable know-it-all."

"She's not my girlfriend!" Harry protested.

"Irrelevant," Snape retorted, taking another sip of tea.

"Well, geez, your preferences are really hard to meet, Professor! We all can't be Slytherins like Draco Malfoy!"

"Mr. Malfoy's family happens to have a history of excellence in the subtleties of magic and potions making…"

"He's also cruel, and a filthy rich snob," Harry shot back. "He'd be just the type to throw snowballs with glass in them at someone who…" Again, Harry stopped himself from treading into dangerous territory. But Snape quickly filled in the blank.

"Someone who…was raised rough?" The man's eyes narrowed. He wanted to shoot down the boy for his insolence, but in his heart, he knew Harry was right. Malfoy would rather die than wear a patched-up coat that had once belonged to a dirt-poor factory worker's son. He could only keep the façade of authority with his pure-blood students via the connections he had made among the Slytherins during his school years. But more often than not, he knew it was a conscious act to distance himself from all he truly was beneath the surface. Even his monotone voice had carefully been trained to suppress any hint of the rough midlands accent of his youth.

"Well…I grew up rough too," Harry confessed. "I mean, not factory town rough, but sleeping in a closet under the stairs isn't exactly high on the hog, y'know. But that's okay. I'd rather be a bit scruffy than a snob, any day."

Snape rolled his eyes. "You have a simplistic mind."

He shrugged. "I guess." Then he started reaching for the honey pot again and hovering the stick over his toast.

"What are you doing?" Snape queried, in partial distaste as the honey started to drip down the crust of the bread.

"Well, you said honey was healthy…"

"Not dribbling all over my coffee table, it's not!"

Just then, there was a rapping on the front door. Snape made grumbling noises. He hated being disturbed when in the act of drinking hot tea. Nevertheless, after shoving a napkin at Harry to clean up the sticky mess, he reluctantly stood and scuffled over to answer it.

There he found his nearest neighbor, the elderly Mrs. Gertrude Wimpleton, who he had done business with in the past.

"Severus Snape," she addressed imperiously, tapping with her cane on the porch. "I am in need of your assistance."

Snape rolled his eyes. "To what do I owe the pleasure of this timely assault upon my privacy?"

"Now don't mouth off with me, young man," she snorted. "My aerial is falling down, and they're just starting to run a holiday special on _The Many Loves of Melinda Maypole_!"

"What's that?" Harry queried, popping up from behind his teacher curiously.

"Soap opera, circa 1974," Snape clarified dismally. Then he focused his attention back on his visitor. "And what exactly has this to do with me, may I ask?"

"If you don't help me in this time of crisis, I shall never feed your pets and plants again!"

Snape exhaled. He knew he needed her to be there for the finicky Angelfang and his belovedly sinister Venus fly trap when school was in session and he couldn't be there for his nearest and dearest ones himself. "Alright, fine," he grumbled, going back in to grab his overcoat again.

Harry mimicked his movements, slipping back into his own borrowed coat eagerly.

"Who said you could join the venture?" Snape snapped.

"Oh, please, it sounds exciting!"

He squinted. "Fixing an aerial excites you? That's…pathetic."

"Not as pathetic as just hanging around here."

"Don't start whining about my house, maggot…"

"I'm not! I just…"

"Enough said," he blurted, giving him a shove towards the door. "If you insist upon being a tag-along nuisance, I suppose I'll have to find something suitably unpleasant in the way of work to keep you occupied."

Once outside, they followed Mrs. Wimpleton to her small house down the hill and across the field. Ushering them inside, she ran about in a flurry wringing her hands in anticipatory anguish as the excessively dramatic cheesy violin theme song heralded the grand introduction of _Many Loves_ through the intermittent static on her TV.

"Problem noted," Snape huffed. "Now where is this degenerate aerial located?"

"On the rooftop," she answered.

"Rooftop?!" Snape exclaimed. "Madam, this is becoming exceedingly precarious…"

"There's a ladder in the lean-to garage…oh, do hurry!"

With the future well-being of Angelfang ever-present in his mind (for all his faults, he had always been fiercely loyal to whatever felines had come to share his dwelling), Snape, followed by the hapless Harry, went out to retrieve the rickety wooden ladder from behind her automobile-oriented grandson's rickety go-cart meant for downhill racing.

Harry, overwhelmed by a tween's curiosity and lack of self-control, reached out and squeezed the horn on the steering wheel, which made a much louder blaring noise than he had expected.

Snape growled and slapped his hand away. "Keep those nasty clingers to yourself!"

"Sorry," the boy muttered.

"Pah," he spat in annoyance. "Here, take the other end of this." He thrust one end of the ladder toward Harry who struggled to balance it against his shoulder. The boy staggered under the weight, but the two of them managed to lug it out to the side of the house and prop it up into position.

While the ladder may have been a certifiable safety hazard, Snape gritted his teeth and prepared to make the ascent. "Foot the ladder," he ordered Harry, starting slowly to mount the first rungs. Slowly but surely, he made it to the top. Clambering onto the roof, he crawled over to the wind-whipped aerial and started jiggling it this way and that.

"Potter!" he shouted down. "Get back in the house and see if the stupid thing is working yet!"

Harry did as he had been bidden, disappearing inside. Coming back out again, he yelled up, "It's working!"

Snape let out a shaky breath and took his hand off the areal, believing his job was done. Then he heard Mrs. Wimpleton yelp from inside.

"It faded out again!" Harry updated.

Snape groaned and snatched at the aerial again. What he needed…was duct tape.

"Look, I need something to hold this bloody thing up!" he exclaimed. "Go see if the old woman has any tape or string or…whatever!"

"Okay," Harry responded, vanishing back into the house. And when he vanished, he really vanished, leaving Snape for a good ten minutes clinging to the icy roof for dear life, getting colder and crankier with every passing second. He was just about prepared to bite someone's head off when Harry finally emerged.

"The guy punched the groom!"

"What…?"

"Melinda's ex-boyfriend's second cousin came in and punched the groom in the middle of the wedding ceremony, and got his gold teeth knocked out that were stolen in a museum heist in Bulgaria! There was fake blood everywhere, and Melinda fainted! It was brilliant!"

"Potter…prepare to die…" Snape growled menacingly, realizing that the kid had been swept up in swirling highs and lows of the ladies' budget TV drama.

"Well…I did get the duct tape…" Harry offered meekly, holding it aloft in a vain effort to defer the death sentence.

"Then get…the hell…up here…" He enunciated the words in a deliberately terrorizing monotone, even though the chattering of his teeth from the cold lessened the effect slightly.

He heard the boy climbing up the ladder, and saw his arm reach up with the duct tape.

"Farther," Snape instructed, realizing it was still out of reach.

Harry started to edge himself onto the roof, sliding on his stomach like a salamander.

"Farther…"

Then suddenly everything went haywire. Harry made an awkward little forward inertia pouncing motion, which resulted in him landing all the way on the roof, and started to rapidly slide downward. Snape, on instinct, snatched at part of the boy's coat, which resulted in him losing balance himself.

The next thing either of them saw was sky, lying in a daze in a clump of snowy bushes beside the house, and the next thing they dimly heard was Mrs. Wimpleton bemoaning the fact that the frequency had failed just when Melinda was threatening to jump out off a balcony on account of her spoiled super-wedding with her criminalistic former groom.


	4. Chapter 4: Grown-Up Christmas List

Chapter 4: Grown-Up Christmas List

Snowy bushes having saved the day, the two unfit antenna fixers survived the ordeal of the roof tumble. But Snape's mood had not been so easily salvaged. Especially when Mrs. Wimpleton inquired how he felt, while he lay temporarily prostrate on her sofa…

"Feel? _Feel?!_ How do you think I feel after being spanwanned on a rooftop for a quarter of an hour and then having to…to…fang 'owt of this?!" He gesticulated at Harry in sheer disgust.

"Huh?" Harry blurted, confused.

"He means he had to straddle a roof for 15 minutes and then try to catch you after you fell, dear," Mrs. Wimpleton supplied.

Snape suddenly realized his lapse into dialectic slang and buried his face in his arm.

"Oh, well…thanks for that, anyway," Harry muttered, eliciting another groan from the horizontally reclined teacher.

"You're dead, boy," he stated darkly. "You're just plainly and simply dead."

"Now, now, no need to be so unpleasant," Mrs. Wimpleton insisted. "I realize you received the worst end of things, breaking the little boy's fall…but think of how I feel."

Snape stared at her in disbelief. " _You_?"

"Yes, the holiday marathon is running as we speak, and I can't even watch it because of how clumsy you two were!"

"What the…"

"Why don't you try and get a hold of Gerard Germsley at the tech shop across town?" Harry suggested, hearkening back to his encounter with the Australian hipster back in the summer before embarking on the calamitous road trip to Hogwarts with Snape.

"Why, what a smart little fellow you are!" she praised him cheerfully. "I do believe I shall give him a ring and bring my aerial trouble to his attention. Even though it is Christmas, he might do an old lady a favor and stop by…"

"That's it; we're getting out of here," the professor decided, dreading the thought of having to encounter Germsley, Mohawk haircut wielding, pink koala bear tattoo wearing, revolutionary of "LUV."

"Are you quite sure you're well enough to walk?" the lady of the house inquired, observing him struggle to sit up on the couch and forcing himself to stand.

"Yes, yes…quite able," he mumbled, even though he looked pretty wobbly. "Potter…the door!" He pointed at it authoritatively, and Harry decided it best to obey.

Once outside, Snape stated lowly, "I'm marking off points, and don't you forget it. I'm keeping the necessary memorandums all up here." He pointed at his head indicatively. "They shall be implemented upon our return to the school."

Harry narrowed his eyes. _Meanie_ , he thought. _Just loves blaming other people for everything…even on Christmas, of all days! Alright, so he'd taken a little longer than he should have, getting that duct tape…but hey, it wasn't like he meant to fall off that roof! The man was just being an irascible git…_

A little farther out into the field, Snape walked over an uneven piece of ground and lost his balance. He stumbled down onto one knee, his hip feeling significantly out of joint from falling off the roof. He was just going to take a second to pull himself together, and then try and stand again…

"What are you doing?" he snapped at Harry, who had made a move towards him.

"I…I thought you might need…a hand up?"

He snorted. "I'm not restoring any of the points I've already marked off for deduction, so don't even try it. You should know better by now…"

"That's…not the point."

The professor squinted. "Then what _is_ the point, oh great thinker?"

Harry turned his eyes down. "I just thought you might need a hand, that's all."

"I don't need a hand from anyone, much less from as incompetent a creature as you." He struggled to get back up on his feet, wincing at the pain slicing through his injured hip. He felt himself sway a little and reached his hand out instinctively to prevent himself from tumbling. It landed accidentally on the boy's shoulder, who seemed to have anticipated the need and stepped into position just at the right moment.

Snape eyed him suspiciously. "That…was accidental."

"I know." Harry's eyes sparkled a little. "But since it seems to be working, why not just…do it like this till we get back to the house?"

"Absolutely not."

"Why not?"

"Because I am no simpering weakling in need of aid from the likes of you!"

"Okay…fine," Harry tried. "But you did fall off a roof, and broke my fall doing it. And it was…sort of my fault it happened, I guess, so…"

"That's why I've made a point to mete out the appropriate punishment to you when we return to Hogwarts."

"But…we're not at Hogwarts right now. We're in Cokeworth. And it's Christmas."

Snape shivered a little. "Genius…" he muttered.

Nevertheless, the recollection of the time and place could not help but leave him with a strange sense of mixed emotions. He realized suddenly how Hogwarts had turned into a little sanctuary of his own spiteful show, his authority eclipsing his humanity, his work replacing his personhood. And he liked it that way. He felt…safe. But now that safety was gone, and under the open sky of his muggle hometown, he felt exceedingly unprotected. And Christmas…oh…

"I go into raptures over Christmas, can't you tell?" he grumbled.

"Well, I didn't always have great Christmases either," Harry offered. "For a long time I didn't even get presents."

"Presents," Snape scoffed.

"Hey, they can be nice sometimes." Harry raised an eyebrow. "Haven't you ever just randomly wanted anything nice for yourself? Most people do, y'know."

Snape glared at him. "A Christmas list, is that it?"

"Yeah, I guess."

The professor turned away. "Maybe I want…a roof that doesn't leak, what do you think of that? Maybe I want a stove…that actually…works…and something decent to cook on it. Maybe I want some tea in a box…with a real label on it…flavored…not watered down." He grimaced a little as he gimped forward. "Maybe I'm so luxurious as to want more than…one plant…shocked yet, Potter? Maybe I might like a whole damned garden, with some…variety. But the hoodlums from town would just…tear it up anyway."

He turned his eyes down, hiding fury and pain. "Maybe I want to get through one bloody holiday without falling on barbwire or cleaning up window glass or getting paint knocked onto me or having to save my cat from being tortured…bloody malicious little monsters…" He was rambling now, as if to himself. "Maybe I could paint up some of the house…or…or fix that window I've been…stuffing in the winter…it gets…cold…"

Now he was just mumbling awkwardly, vulnerably. "Maybe I could…get…get my cups and saucers back…" He swallowed. "A woman…should never have had to die…without those things…that made her feel…like a woman…but she did, she had to die, all alone, in that…house…she…she was…"

"Sir, please… _stop_."

Harry's voice made Snape freeze, realizing just how far he had aimlessly rambled, and that they had now reached the porch. He narrowed his eyes at the boy, who looked genuinely concerned. "Don't you dare…tell them…your wretched…Gryffindor disciples…don't you…breathe one word of it…"

"I'd never do that."

"You better not," he panted, fist clenched. "You do, and I'll…"

"You don't have to threaten me," Harry exhaled. "I won't do it. Cross my heart I won't." He looked down himself now. "Remember, I…I lost my own mum too."

Snape shrugged painfully. "Get…get in the house."

Snape was just sitting there on the sofa, staring vacantly in front of him. He had been doing so for almost a half hour since they had returned to the house. And Harry was starting to get worried. He needed…medicine. He knew he did. But he wouldn't take it of his own accord. And he was sinking…badly…

Harry summoned up the courage to sit across from him on the sofa. He seemed not to notice or respond for a long, long time. Then Harry addressed him softly, "Professor Snape…"

"Go away."

"Professor…listen to me…"

"No…get away from me."

"Why do you have to be this way? Why do you have to be so…"

"Maybe I don't want to have to look at… _your face_!" he snarled, seething with hostility.

"Well, maybe I'm not so crazy about yours either!" Harry shot back, his own temper reaching a boiling point.

"Then…why don't you…get the hell away from me?!" Snape was shaking now, from tousled-up emotions that he couldn't contain or express right.

"Because," Harry blurted.

Again, he glared at the boy and his breathing turned into panting. "Why…?"

"Just…because…I can't…" Harry shuddered. He just couldn't…leave him like this.

"I want… _quiet_ ," he hissed. "Is that…so hard…to understand?"

"I can be quiet," the boy responded.

Snape snorted in disbelief.

"I can be quiet for as long you can," Harry dared him. "You just try me."

So Harry just sat there, quiet as a mouse on the other side of the couch. Silence reigned supreme between them. The minutes ticked by, and yet time seemed broken. Snape was unaccustomed to the presence of another, even if he was not making any noise, and he shifted awkwardly from time to time. But he didn't banish the boy. Harry, holding himself back from moving or talking with all his might, began to sense they were both reluctantly adjusting to each other.

Finally, he saw Snape lean into the sofa and let his eyes close. It became apparent that he had slumped into a cat nap, which Harry assumed was not uncommon for him. Judging from the bruised circles under his eyes, he did not sleep well at night.

Watching him asleep was a strange thing. Once again, he had his guard down, as he had out in the woods, and a little bit when they had tea, and then when back to the house…

Harry grimaced at the thought of Snape's rambling. It had been pathetically incoherent, pathetically…human. Just flavored tea and a garden and stuffing for his window and teacups. And perhaps just a little understanding. He might have been battling with ever so many demons inside, but at the end of the day, they didn't define the deepest part of him.

Harry blinked. He didn't look half so much like a vampire now. Just a very tired, lonely, uncared-for man, all burnt out from his own bitterness against humanity that he thought would protect him…but only tore him up in the end.

Just then, Angelfang leapt up on the couch again and this time nuzzled under Snape's arm. The professor, still asleep, groggily murmured something along the lines of "hello kitty" and unconsciously let his hand drift back and forth along her fur. The cat started to purr contentedly, and Harry couldn't help but smile just a little. For someone who could be so terror-inflicting when he was awake, he could be kind of cute in his reactions when he was out of it.

And soon, Harry himself found himself falling out of it, and let his heavy eyelids close…

When he opened them again, he found Snape was very much awake, and glaring at him. Harry jerked up, waiting for…something. He didn't know what.

"Congratulations," Snape remarked quietly. "Managing to hold your blathering tongue must have taken some excruciating effort…even if you did drift into slumber part time, through."

"Well, you did too!" he responded.

Snape dead-eyed him. "Your point?"

"Well…I only told you I could do it for as long as you could," he reminded him.

The professor snorted. "What do you want? The medal of honor?"

"No, I just…" He yawned. "Just wanted you to say it, that's all."

Snape shrugged, and then sank into silence again. They stayed that way for a long time before Harry finally dared to break it.

"Was…was your mum magical, professor?"

He had no idea how Snape would react, for good or ill, but the man ultimately gave a single nod of his head.

"Did she go to Hogwarts?"

Again a curt nod was his only response.

"What house was she sorted into?"

"Take…a ruddy wild guess."

"So same as you then?

He closed his eyes. "Are you quite through with this tedious inquisition?"

"I don't mean it any bad way. I just…I actually think that's cool, her being from Slytherin. She'd probably be really proud of you becoming the head of the whole thing."

"Proud," he repeated darkly. "Always pride in exchange for blood, sweat, and tears." He pushed himself back against the sofa, and his hand tightened around the armrest.

Harry wondered if he should keep going or stop. But he just…could not bear to leave him like this. He almost thought incurring his ire was preferable to observing the silent desolation that had taken over his countenance. He had to try…try to snap him out of it…

"There was an old box of records I found in the attic. Did you…want to keep them or…?"

"There's no point in it, really," he retorted. "The damn player broke ages ago."

"Oh, well…I thought…they looked rather interesting," Harry commented. "They seemed like…they had some kind of foreign language on them."

"Italian," he filled in dismally. "It's…opera."

"Huh," Harry breathed out. "I don't know nothing about opera."

" _Anything_ , Potter," Snape corrected irritably. "And that just goes to show what a cultureless little philistine you are."

"Well, hey, where the heck would I be learning about opera?!" Harry defended himself. "I mean…come on, I'm going to a school for Wizardry, not classical music!"

"Even if you were," he countered, "you'd probably be horrible at remembering such things. You don't have a culturally adequate mind. Neither did your fa…"

"Try me!" Harry challenged, initiating a deadlock of eye-to-eye contact akin to psychological arm wrestling. "You just…tell me about the songs on the records, and I'll remember what you tell me, and you'll be very surprised by how well I do."

"They're not just songs, you impertinent lout, they're whole plays."

"So? I can remember plays!"

He sighed. "And what if I simply don't care to bother tutoring you in something I know you'll fail at?"

"You won't _know_ , unless you _try_."

Again, they were back to staring at each other, hard and hot. Finally Snape gestured with his chin to the pile of stuff Harry had cleaned out from the attic, and the boy went and snatched up the records box. "Okay, so…who or what is Madame Butterfly?"

"An opera in three acts, by Giacomo Puccini," he rattled. "It chronicles the torrid affair of a Japanese geisha girl who falls madly in love with a Yankee sailor man…"

"A… _what_?"

"He doesn't reciprocate…"

"That's…too bad…"

"So, after a lot of in-between catastrophes, she cuts her throat open with her father's knife in the end."

"Oh…terrific…" Harry blurted, starting to feel sick.

"But to do it proper justice I really should start at the beginning of Act 1, when the American sailor first arrives in Nagasaki…"

"And all this…is in Italian?!"

"Don't be dense, boy," he shrugged. "What do you think it would be in? Japanese?"

"Well…uh…"

"Oh, just button it and let me get on with this, will you?"

So on they went, flipping through the records one by one, with Harry reading off the title, Snape telling him the story behind the opera, and then quizzing the boy about it as soon as he was finished. Surprisingly, Harry was doing quite well at the game, and Snape seemed to have left behind his state of despondency to test the child as sharply as he could. In fact, this form of antagonistic play was giving them the unexpected opportunity to show off to each other, and they both found themselves rather liking it.

"Well, read off the title, boy," Snape ordered, finally getting into the swing of things, as his pupil stalled at one of the records.

"Ummm…." Harry hesitated. "It…it says…Score from Bambi…."

Quicker than quick, the record was snatched out of his hand. Snape stared at it for a long time, then polished the dust off with his sleeve.

"I….never knew there was an opera about Bambi."

"There isn't, dimwit," Snape huffed. "This is…an anomaly in the collection."

"So…it _is_ from the cartoon?"

He exhaled. "Your mother enjoyed it."

"Oh, yeah…because of the deer, right?"

"Brilliant deduction." Snape shrugged. "She made me…view it with her once or twice."

"Wow, really?" Harry exclaimed. Imagining Snape, even a young Snape, watching a Disney film was a shocking, and utterly hilarious, stretch of the imagination.

"Didn't I just say it?" He shoved the record back at Harry. "She…she got rather emotional when the mother deer…died, so…she needed moral support."

The irony of this struck Severus as soon as it was out of his mouth. Lily…and the deer…and sacrifice…for a fawn…

Back then, she had just reminded him of Feline, exuberant, giggly, teasing…quite adorable. And she would laugh and say he could be like the bashful Bambi, barely able to say hello sometimes. He probably had been. Whatever. He had just been happy to know that in the end of the film the two wound up together, cemented by the theme "Love Is a Song That Never Ends." Which was, of course, on the record Lily had given him that Christmas.

Besides, it was good to know that if she had needed a shoulder to cry on during her emotional movie meltdowns, he was going to be that shoulder…

"Girls," Harry sighed. "They get all out of sorts over every little thing."

"She was…empathetic. She took the sufferings of others into her own self."

And Snape had a strange inkling that if the boy ever found himself watching the film, that scene with Bambi wandering alone in the snow, calling for his mother, now shot through by a hunter's bullet, might just leave an impression. He shivered, thinking of it himself…he wanted to think of something else…another memory…anything…

"She used to get out a mixing bowl during television viewings, and dump almost everything edible in the house into it."

"Really? What kind of stuff?"

"Granola," he recalled, in monotone, "table crackers, popcorn, chocolate covered raisins…"

"Whoa!"

"It was quite…unique." He raised an eyebrow. "Your aunt did not approve. She was always threatening to turn your mother in for parental chastisement for the flagrant misuse of the mixing bowls."

"Oh, Aunt Petunia never approves of anything," Harry sighed.

"We…can agree on that." Snape knew she certainly never approved of him.

He remembered her whining while he and Lily had watched TV, "Are you watching that stupid Disney movie again, with that weirdo?"

"Get lost, Tuney!" Lily would shout back, crossing her arms. "We're not bothering you!"

"You're hogging up the whole television! You're obsessed with that stupid cartoon and that freakish friend of yours, with his creepy magic tricks!"

"Listen, if you call him one more name, I'm going to use what he taught me, and turn you right into a really homely puddle duck!"

Alright, so neither of them was nearly as proficient in magic to achieve such a feat at the time, but the threat worked beautifully, and Petunia reluctantly removed herself from their space. And 9-year-old Severus had remarked dryly, "What about turning her into a platypus in Australia…then she'd still have a beak, but she'd be across the ocean from us."

That gave Lily a good laugh. He liked to make her laugh. He missed her laugh…

"I wish…" Harry paused for a long time.

Snape raised an eyebrow. "Go on. Get it out."

"I wish….that we could have…I mean, that mum were here, and we could have…gone through this stuff together. The three of us."

Snape's throat constricted automatically. His eyes grew hard and they bore through the boy for a long time before he managed to rasp, "You…are not…"

But he found that he could not finish, not finish the words burning through his brain: _my own_.

He stood up suddenly and walked over to the mantelpiece, hiding within himself a sudden emotional surge. So this was the answer to everything, was it not? This boy was not his boy, which meant that his Lily had given herself to another man…his most hated enemy, no less. And this offspring of theirs was proof of it by his very existence, though he could not help it.

But now Snape felt strangely trapped between two extremes. He found that he could not truly hate him, for there was too much Lily in him, and yet he could not manage to love him either, for James continued to live through him…and Snape feared he gone past the point of being able to love anything anyway. But he also feared he had somehow gone past the point of keeping to his chillingly stony balance.

Still, he felt haunted by the image of the boy and his mother, being alive and safe and together, and somehow visiting him at his house…reminiscing fondly over crazy childhood memories, Lily with her infectious laugh, Snape still playing straight man, making deliciously sarcastic commentary, the boy always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time…Snape still jumping down his throat, but in a slightly less bitter, more playful way…

"Now don't be so hard on Harry, Sev," she would lecture him, starting to randomly pick the bits of lint off his cloak with a motherly hand, and brush it out straight. "You need some curtains to brighten this place up; it's turning you into a cranky old man ahead of your years. There are some lovely calico ones I can bring…"

 _Damn. Damn._ He could have lived with that. Being this boy's snarky surrogate uncle, with his mother still acting like some sort of surrogate sister to him, he might have even managed to force himself to maintain a bare minimum of civility around James. And she would doubtlessly have teased him about needing to get out and meet some nice girls, maybe she would even have tried to set him up on dates…but he would have staunchly shaken his head, and they both would have tacitly known what that meant. If he could not have had her in that way, he would not have had anyone in that way. But even having lost the moon of romance, he still would have been able to cling to the stars of their friendship.

But for all his fantasizing, the sky had gone all black for him, without a spark of the palest light, sometimes it seemed. Well…almost…

He turned slowly back to the boy with the Bambi record in his hand. "You can keep it…if you want it."

"But…but she gave it to you…"

"You are her son," he stated. "I'm just…a particularly nasty former friend. Besides, do you think the music was ever really suited to my tastes?"

Harry blinked and replied lowly, "You know that wasn't the point."

He shrugged. "You and your points, pernicious little mite."

Just then there was another knock at the door. Snape grumbled under his breath. Who could it possibly be now…?


	5. Chapter 5: As Sharp As Any Thorn

Chapter 5: As Sharp As Any Thorn

Upon opening the door, and having Angelfang take the opportunity to bolt out for a nightly venture into the unknown, Snape beheld none other than Gerard Germsley, Cokeworth's eccentric Australian tech store manager, still sporting his Mohawk haircut and nose earring, and now decked out in a psychedelic lime green glow-in-the-dark windbreaker studded with sequence simulations of ruby red Christmas lights.

"Blessed be, and all solstice vibes be with thee!" the hippie hailed him, lifting his fingers in the sign of peace.

"I'm touched," Snape grunted, unappreciatively.

"Good on you, dude," Germsley accepted, proffering a basket and shoving it into Snape's arms. "Just here the drop off the best of the season from yon elder one with the aerial woes."

"So…did you fix Mrs. Wimpleton's signal after all?" asked Harry, popping up from behind Snape.

"Little mate, she has experienced a reawakening of all good energies," he assured, handing Snape another strangely packaged item.

"And…what's this supposed to be?" he demanded, suspiciously. "That old woman has been complaining about her close proximity to my abode costing her the prizes at home and gardening competitions…this wouldn't happen to be something that ticks…?"

"Dude, this is a peace offering from yours truly!"

"It…is?"

"Abso-tutle-lutely!"

Snape ripped off the wrapping unceremoniously and beheld what appeared to be a fancy air freshener, the kind that was supposed to give off some sort of aromatic essence whilst turning different colors.

"Are you insinuating my house is somehow not fit to breathe in?" Snape snapped.

"Not it at all, my good comrade," he insisted. "Fate has it, this baby doesn't even freshen."

Snape squinted. "You mean…you're giving me something that was on your broken discount shelf and you can manage to sell for tuppence?"

"Hey, it'll still bring a rainbow of enlightenment to your indwelling!"

"Brilliant…"

"Hate to deprive you of my luminous presence, but I've gotta be hitting the road…day-after-solstice sales, y'know!"

"I can…imagine."

"All hail the solstice, bro!" With that, he hopped on his matching lime green motor bike, revved up the intolerably loud engine, and shuttled down road.

As the last vibrations of the oxygen-eater faded away, a blood-curdling screech was heard from Snape's shed. Harry saw his teacher's eyes widen, as if he somehow knew the nature of the situation, and shoving the Christmas basket at the boy, he charged off towards the shed.

Harry quickly deposited the basket on the end table inside, thrust on his coat again, and then followed after him to see what was going on. Outside the door, he heard a terrible crashing noise, and Snape shouting, and then laughter…the cutting kind.

Bolting into the shed, Harry was dumbfounded by the sight of Snape sprawled on the floor tangled up a spread of barb wire, swearing violently as the bully children from the woods were cackling and holding Angelfang upside by the tail. One of them had a cigarette lighter and another one a pocket knife.

Harry seriously didn't know what he was doing, nor the consequences that would be sure to ensue, but he found himself resolutely walking up to the one holding Angelfang…and calmly punching him right in the nose. This memory rapidly was overtaken by what must have been a gang-up stramash, in which Harry was decidedly was defeated (muggle fighting just wasn't his thing, besides the fact that it was one against four), and then a pile up, and the rather unpleasant experience of someone sitting on his face.

"Teacher's pet!" one boy taunted.

"Am... _not_! That's the furthest thing from what I…" he managed, before they punched him in the gut.

"Then why you scrougin' around for a vampire and his devil cat?"

"You're the ones most acting like the devil!" he spat. Then he got the beautiful experience of enduring a knuckle sandwich, at which point he indeed started to wonder why he was where he was, and why he would ever bother incurring this sort of thing over the Dungeon Bat, of all people on the face of planet earth…

But by the time Harry recovered from the buzzing, blanked out feeling he had, the bullies had already made their escape, and all he could focus on was the sound of Angelfang mewing painfully and barbed wire being dragged. When his eyes readjusted to the dark, he realized it was his teacher, still on the ground, bloodied and tangled up, trying to drag himself forward to rescue his cat.

Harry shook himself out of his own stupor, managed to relocate his glasses that had been knocked off him during the scuffle, and crawled over to him. "Professor, stop…you'll get hurt…"

"Leave me be," he spat.

Harry didn't listen. He reached through the tangled barbs caught on the man's coat, and touched his arm. Snape jerked, as if touched by fire.

"Potter, I said…don't touch, don't touch, I told you…" He was shaking now, and Harry saw the pale fading light of evening cross his dark eyes, and they were startled, shaken to the root of his iced-over heart, like an animal threatened with a beating, desperately snarling to keep his tormenters at bay. He started fighting to get the wire off of him on his own, and Harry winced as the barbs scratched his teacher across the face, drawing fresh blood.

"Stop, you're hurting yourself!" the boy blurted, again daring to try and seize his arm.

"I'm used to it!" Snape shouted, but the tone of his voice melted into one of defeat, and he fell over on his side, worn out with struggling. "I'm used…to…hurting myself…" And Harry saw in those eyes that glimmer of exquisite suffering that almost always gives way to tears, but Snape would not let himself go. "Must you…keep pushing…pushing someone to the brink, Potter? Must you always…push so damn bloody hard on me…?"

Harry swallowed hard, and then without saying anything further, started to help pull the barbs off of him and struggle to undo the terrible tangles. It stung his hands, but the look Snape gave him stung worse. It was the look of one who had grown used to expecting the worst of people, and was in disbelief anyone would dare to challenge the norm.

"Go back in the house…get yourself cleaned up," he muttered. "It's…alright, I can manage…I…I've done it…before."

"Yeah, but I wasn't here then," Harry stated, still fighting with the wires.

"You'll…get sick out here," he predicted. "Too…cold, and you still…haven't gotten the zipper right, you little fool…" He awkwardly started playing Harry's zipper, It seemed to take his mind off his own woes for a moment as the boy managed to untangle the wire wrapped around his arm. Snape looked down at it, and the way the wire had torn through the material, and clasped his other hand around it, as if there was something there he wanted no one else to see.

"You can bandage it up inside," Harry offered. "I…I can help you."

There was a click in Snape's throat. "Idiot…don't even know…the half of it…"

"So what? I can still help stop bleeding…"

"No, no, you'll do nothing of the kind!"

"Alright, whatever, but I'm not letting you turn into an icicle out here…almost done anyway…"

Angelfang, lying frightfully injured on the ground, was making pathetic mewing sounds that seemed to cut Snape to the quick. "Go…go help her, if you're of a mind," he mumbled.

"I will, just as soon as I'm done," Harry assured. And he did so when he got Snape free, going over to the cat and wincing at the site of her fur, some bloodied and matted, some singed, some torn off altogether. When he tried to touch her, she hissed at him, her ears flat back against her head and her back arched.

"Angelfang, please…"

"Leave her, I'll do it," Snape panted, crawling up from behind him and hurriedly pushing him out of the way. When he saw the state she was in, he shut his eyes tight. Then he started talking to her, trying to soothe her with the familiarity of his voice in Latin. Even though she was still stiff and scratching, he managed to scoop her up and hold her tight against him. And as his hand ran down her head, she started to make a sad, sweet purring noise, broken up by whimpers of pain.

And Harry realized for a moment that this cat was probably the only living creature that seemed to trust Snape without question, to trust him more than anyone else. And he realized just how deeply the man needed that sort of trust being placed in him, just to get himself through.

Back inside, Snape utilized an old record box for his cat, padding it down with bits of stuffing he had been using for the window, and blocking that up with a pillow. Then he got to work trying to patch her up with a salve he had concocted and some makeshift bandaging. She bit and clawed in reaction, but he didn't flinch, just held her down as best he could, and soothed her with his Latin talk.

Harry came over and tapped him on the shoulder, eliciting a stern glance from him. "Here," the boy offered, extending a crumpled red sweater he had dug out of his throw bag. "It could make it softer for her."

Snape hesitated, then slowly accepted the offer and tucked her in rather tenderly with it. He staggered over to the sofa and sat down there. Harry settled in next to him.

"I…would have gotten her…a better bed," the teacher said, weakly. "I wanted to get her one…for a while…" She mewed painfully again, and he stared out in front of him, as if trying to get away from where he was, go somewhere else in his head, but he couldn't manage it. "Should I…use chloroform…on her?"

Harry doubted Snape's question was aimed at anyone but himself, as if his ability to make such a hard decision had abandoned him. But the boy decided to respond anyway.

"Is that…what you want to do?" he queried, his voice disbelieving.

"What do you think? I just enjoy killing things?" he blurted bitterly, wrapping his arms around himself. "I…only want to stop… _pain_ …stop…stop the pain, that's all…"

Harry felt his stomach flip. Of course not, of course he didn't want to kill things, or to see them suffering, really and truly twisted up in pain like that, especially not his only companion in the world that might ease his loneliness. He might like to chew out his students, snatch their points, put them under pressure and on edge…but that only constituted petty meanness, not any level of genuine bloodlust.

"Angelfang…is tough," Harry stated, determined to sound confident. "She can handle the pain…she can get through this. She's tough…like you are. She can get through, alright."

Snape met the boy's gaze. "Tough?"

"Yeah, really tough. If she's anything like you, she'd never just roll over and die. She'll be okay. Just gotta give her a chance to show what she's made of..." Harry blinked back something, then hesitantly moved his hand towards Snape's arm, letting it rest there tentatively for a moment while the man stared at him oddly. "She'll…she'll be okay. Really."

Snape let his eyes drift down to the boy's hand, then back up to his face. "You're all…scratched up," he realized, rather numbly, seeing the cuts from the barbed wire on his palm and cheek.

"Well…so are you," Harry noted with a shrug.

"We'll both be lucky if we don't get blood poisoning," he lamented, taking Harry's hand and examining it. "Go on, better wash up in the sink."

"You better too," the boy advised, hopping up from the sofa.

Snape shook his head, seemingly annoyed, but stood up anyway and made his way over to wash up in the bathroom. There he snatched a paper towel from a roll, rinsed it in the sink, leaned over and roughly rubbed it over Harry's face.

"Ouch!" he yelped. "That hurts!"

"Then you shouldn't mess with barbed wire nor, may I add, with those accustomed to factory yard fights," he growled, turning on the sink, yanking up Harry's sleeves, and shoving his hands under the water. "You couldn't have been so conceited as to believe you'd have the upper hand."

Harry exhaled in frustration. "I had to do what I had to do."

"Did you?"

"Afraid so."

Snape just rolled his eyes and stood up to his full height to get some sort of healing ointment out of the medicine cabinet.

"How tall are you?" Harry asked out of nowhere.

The professor squinted at him suspiciously. "Why on earth do you ask?"

"It's just…well, we all thought you were kind of tall for the past two years, and I was just…noticing your medicine cabinet is so high up, and…I don't know. Just wondering."

"The medicine cabinet is 'high up' because you are a runt," he snarked, leaning back down and starting to firmly apply it to the cuts and bruises on the boy's face.

"I'm no runt!" Harry shot back. "I haven't even finished growing yet!"

Snape raised an eyebrow.

Harry sighed. "So…are you, like, six-something?"

"Did you lay some sort of perverse wager with your clique or something?"

"Well, not…not exactly, just, like…wondering…"

"Six-one."

"Oh." Harry could have sworn he was taller. Maybe he just seemed larger than life when marching along the aisles, making sure all the students' eyes were to their books. And when he looked down his long nose at the children, his eyes steely hard and unrelenting, it always made them feel teeny-tiny and desperate to escape before somehow being eaten alive. "So…was…was my dad as tall as that?"

"Potter…"

"All I want to know is his height! That's not too much to ask, is it?"

Snape huffed. "Shorter."

"But…taller than me, obviously, right?"

"There are some house elves taller than you…"

"Oh, come on!" Harry threw up his hands. "I bet I'll grow!"

"You do?"

"Yeah, I'll be as tall as my dad someday, you'll see."

Snape just shook his head again, and Harry thought he detected the slightest hint of amusement. "Given how much you're like him in almost every other conceivable way, I wouldn't be half surprised."

"Almost?" Harry challenged.

"Yes…" He paused for a moment. "You seem to lack…a certain talent he possessed."

Harry looked rather downcast. "Well, maybe I'll grow into it or something. I've still got growing time overall, you know."

"Perhaps you will at that," he relented, but it rang with distaste.

"Heck, what was it?"

"The talent of…making it hurt, Potter." Snape turned his eyes away. "Kicking a man when he's down, and making an art of it. I just don't see it in you yet, I'm afraid."

Harry didn't know what to say in response to that, whether to take it as an insult, or a compliment, or both. So he said nothing at all.

Wandering back into the living room, Snape's gaze fell on the coffee table. "Would you…like anything to eat?" the man inquired, gesturing awkwardly to the basket from Mrs. Wimpleton.

Harry twitched a smile. "Getting hungry?"

"No," Snape disclaimed in annoyance. "Have no appetite at all. I just thought…"

"Well, I'm not going to eat it if you're not going to," he retorted. "We both really should, though, 'cause it's been hours."

He sat down on the couch again and started pulling apart the contents of the basket, which included fruit cake, pumpkin bread, Danish butter cookies, and cheddar popcorn, tucked neatly in a throw blanket. There was also a carton of eggnog which Harry looked particularly keen on.

"Don't go drinking that stuff straight up," Snape grumbled. "Even it out with milk."

"Milk?"

"Yes," Snape acknowledged wearily. "There's some in the ice box."

Harry begrudgingly came back with the milk, and proceeded to mix it with the eggnog, both for himself and Snape. "Hey, could I…try and give some to Angelfang too?" He gestured to her box, where she seemed to be busy tearing apart Harry's sweater with her teeth, possibly to refer pain.

Snape shrugged, seemingly wary of the concept but not strong enough against it to stop him either. So Harry went over with his glass to the box, and coaxed the cat to drink some. She seemed note-worthily reluctant, but ultimately poked her nose into the glass and licked up a little of the strangely stirred substance.

"Drink the rest of yours," Snape instructed when the boy came back to the couch. "Calcium is…good for you."

Harry made a low, grumbling noise as he picked up the glass.

"Believe me, if your mother were here…she'd make you drink it," he insisted, "just like she made me drink it."

"You?"

" _Yesss_." He rolled his eyes. "She did play the part of older sister ever and anon. Well, older by two months, but…at any rate, it did me good, or else I might have had serious problems with malnutrition."

"You didn't eat enough at your house?" Harry surmised.

Snape closed his eyes. He didn't want to go into the details of it all, how when they were ten, Lily had noticed one day that he was wobbly at school from not having eaten in two days after his father gambled away his pay at a card game in the pub. So she took it upon herself to build up his strength again.

"Suffice to say, calcium is vital for a nutritious diet, and I didn't have nearly enough. So clearly, if she were that insistent with me, how do you think she'd be with her own son?" He looked away and explained, "I'm simply trying to do what I think she would want done. Understand?"

Harry nodded, and gulped down the rest of the milk. Then he looked back at Snape. "Have you taken your medication today?"

The professor's eyes narrowed. "That is none of your affair, Potter."

"Yes, it _is_ ," Harry protested. "Because I'm just trying to do what I think _she_ would want done. Understand?"

"Why you insolent little…" Anger flashed across Snape's face for a moment, then it faded, meeting the boy's determined emerald eyes.

"She'd want you to take it. You know she would. It's good for you." He inhaled. "Besides, it's only fair. I mean, if you're trying to sort of stand in for her with me, you should let me sort of stand in for her with you."

Snape looked paler than usual. "That was the reason for the card…wasn't it?"

"That…and just…" Harry shrugged. "I don't know. Because it's Christmas."

The man stared blankly in front of him for a spell. "In the attic…I…I wasn't thinking of you, at that moment."

"I kind of figured that," the boy admitted. "You wanted to clock my dad, right?"

"It…had to do with…a time after your mother and I had…had a very bad falling out. I said something in anger…something very bad, something I didn't mean. And I made…other mistakes…" He paused, not sure how far he wanted to go, or indeed, how far was wise to go. "Your father grew closer to her in the aftermath of this…and claimed…claimed she didn't want me to have the cards…anymore."

The memory still stung from that Christmas of his fifth year, when he found James Potter had broken into his quarters and had the cards in one hand, and a lit match in the other.

"She doesn't want her childhood scribblings in the hands of a death-eater, Snivelus," James had sneered. "You might just do something untoward with them."

His mind had exploded at the suggestion that he would ever use Lily's gestures of friendship to bring her harm. "You lie! You lie, damn you to hell!" And they had struggled on the ground in the dark. The match caught onto one of the cards, but Snape had put the fire out with his hand, in spite of the pain. _He needed those cards, like the breath of life._

"I didn't want to believe…she wanted them back," Snape admitted to Harry. "It did not seem like something she would do, or say, even in the wreckage of our friendship. But perhaps…"

He thought back to how James Potter had taunted him that night as he clutched the cards tight against him, and said that he could very well keep them, for they were meaningless now. He would always live with the fear that Lily had wanted them back, that she regretted ever having given them to him, that the bright pink glitter ink spelling "MY VERY BEST FRIEND" was all a lie. No, worse…an illusion. And he had cursed at his rival until he left, and then cried himself to sleep on the floor, the cards still clutched at his chest, and the glitter dusting his dark clothes.

"She didn't say that," Harry stated. "You know she didn't."

He stared intently at this son of his best friend and worst enemy. "How…do you know?"

"Because you were _best friends_ ," he emphasized. "Very best friends. My mum wrote that, and she wouldn't have just made that up. She had to care about you, and if you care about someone that much, it never goes away."

"I…I don't…" Snape's voice cracked.

"But _I_ do."

Snape watched as the boy got up and darted into the kitchen. He returned in a twinkling with medication in hand .

"You're a know-it-all brat, you know that?" Snape growled.

"I know." Harry's eyes sparkled a little as he pushed the bottle of pills and his glass of milk towards him.

"I don't need it," he protested.

"Yes, you do."

"I'll deduct more points from you if you keep pressing me," he threatened.

"Deduct away." Harry squinted, determined to return death stare with death stare.

"You're pig-headed, Potter. You're just like your…"

"Mother," he finished.

Snape's eyes bored into him for his temerity. Then they softened slightly. He nodded once, in reluctant acknowledgement of what had been said, opened the bottle, and tossed a pill into his mouth. Then in a strange ceremonial manner, he clinked his milk glass with Harry's, as if he expected the pill was really poison and he was bidding adieu to the world, and gulped it down.

"Great, so now that that's done," Harry exhaled, "want to open the giant box out under the porch?"

"The… _what_?"

"There's like this giant box under the porch. It's been there since last night, I think."

"You never informed me of this." Snape stood abruptly. "It could have been planted by someone with ill intent…"

"Well, a lot of stuff started happening at once around here!"

Harry jumped up, flung on his overcoat, and followed Snape out to the porch and beheld the box as described. The professor dragged it out, and both of them spotted the owl label instantly.

"Dumbledore," they blurted in accord.

" _Headmaster_ , to you," Snape snapped, starting to lug the box up the porch steps. "Help me with this, lazy bones."

"I'm not lazy," Harry grumbled, taking the other end of the box and helping drag it into the house. They set it down in the middle of the sitting room, and Snape grabbed a razor out of the drawer to cut through the tape crisscrossing the box.

After yanking it open and digging through the mounds of plastic peanuts, Harry pulled out a letter marked with the Hogwarts wax seal.

"Give me that!" Snape ordered in agitation, tearing it open, wishing upon every star that it contained a long overdue Christmas bonus for him. Alas, the message simply read:

 **A Happy Christmas to Professor Snape and Co.!**

 **Enjoy this little token of our esteem, from the Hogwarts staff.**

 **We feel assured it will bring the Christmas spirit of unity and harmony to your household.**

 **All Warm and Fuzzy Feelings,**

 **Albus** **Dumbledore, Headmaster**

Snape snorted. "Why do I have a negative feeling about this…?"

"It's a TV!" Harry exclaimed.

The professor gazed down at the inauspicious little glass box, that looked about twenty years old, and appeared to have no remote control. There were also scratches and smudge marks all along the screen. "I think…my life is over," he stated factually.

"Well…look, they also sent a video tape," Harry tried to cheer him up, holding aloft the VHS triumphantly. The label was descriptively embossed with the words: "HOLIDY TAPE."

"That…scares me," Snape frankly admitted. It was bargain bin material, start to finish.

"Well, can't hurt to just…you know…watch it."


	6. Chapter 6: To Raise Us from the Grave

Chapter 6: To Raise Us from the Grave

Once Harry and Snape figured out how to hook up the TV and VHS player, they sat back on the sofa to figure out just what mysterious contents Dumbledore had in store for them via the enigmatic "Holiday Tape." It rapidly became evident who had done the recording.

"Seriously," Snape blurted. "Camcorder clips from last Christmas? Recorded by…Hagrid?!"

"Wow, we had a really nice tree," Harry reminisced as the screen zoomed towards it, and the choir setting up for Christmas Eve rehearsal.

"Professor McGonagall wanted a Victorian theme," Snape remarked. "Hence all the paper doily cut-outs."

"Yeah, Hermione told us about that," Harry confirmed. "She helped make some of the decorations."

"What the…why is the numbskull going down to the classrooms?"

"I guess he just wants the spread…"

"There's going to be no one there but me, because I'll be cleaning up all the nasty pre-Christmas candy wrappers and other debris lying around and preparing the next set of tests for the next day of classes…"

 _'You idiot! What are you bringing your damned camera in here for? I'm busy preparing the next set of tests for the next bloody class, you nitwit! Get that devilish contraption out of my face!'_

Snape looked rather in awe of himself on camera, and the full terrifying force of his persona, as his cloak swirled and he charged towards the camera-wielder, inaugurating a tussle.

"Did you, like, tackle him?" Harry queried, mouth agape.

"He got away, I'm afraid," Snape lamented dramatically.

The camera garbled out, and then jumped to another clip, this time of the students hanging around by the pageant stage area. Harry spotted himself, Hermione, Ron, Draco, and some of his Slytherin cronies.

"At least some promising individuals are making an appearance," Snape sneered.

Hagrid started interviewing the kids genially, as was his way, about their likes and dislikes, their favorite teachers, and least favorite…

Harry started to shrink against the back of the couch as video Ron yelped, _'We sure know Draco's favorite! Gotta be that greasy dungeon bat!'_

"And…10 points from Mr. Weasley," Snape enunciated for the sake of sweet vengeance.

Then events took an interesting turn. Draco started mouthing off.

 _'What's he to me? He'd not be worth a rusty cauldron in his position if not for my father! He's made him everything he is, and it's in his best interests to keep that in mind!'_

Even video Hagrid seemed a bit shocked. _'But Draco, ain't he your godfather and all…?'_

 _'Yeah, because my dad thought he was good at mixing things up, but no relation of mine. He's half-blood, you know what that means? He's no part of me…'_

Abruptly, the clip was cut off and evidently copied over, heralding the introduction of the Island of Misfit Toys scene from _Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer_.

Harry dared to glance over at Snape's face, and saw a mixture of stunned silence and acknowledgement of what he must have always known, deep inside, to be the case. His bad day was just getting worse and worse, knowing what his prized, protected puppy really thought of him…

"Professor…look, he always punks out on camera," Harry said quickly. "It's not, like, for real; he just wants to show off, is all."

"Since when have you become an apologist for Malfoy?" Snape growled.

"I'm not! I'm just saying…"

"Trying to spare my feelings?!"

"No!" the boy blurted. "Duh, I'm just telling you how it is! He does this sort of thing a lot, so it can't be taken too seriously."

Snape was silent for a long moment, watching Rudolph distractedly. "He was quite correct," he admitted quietly. "His father has been the prime mover of my career."

Harry shrugged. "Well, you seem to know a lot of stuff on your own. He didn't give you what it takes to be smart, I doubt."

"Do you think smarts are enough to raise person out of this place?" he scoffed. "No, he…he thought my abilities were worth something to him, so he offered me his friendship in first year."

"Yeah, Draco did the same with me," Harry concurred.

Snape looked astonished. "Then why the hell didn't you take it, Potter? He would have been much use to you on your side, and a great opponent against you."

"Because," the boy started, "I told you, he's a professional snob, and is mean to people for kicks, and people I care about to boot."

Snape gazed down at his hands. "So you chose the dirt poor Weasleys and that uppity muggleborn Granger over one of the most distinguished families in the Wizarding World?"

"In a heartbeat."

His teacher shifted uncomfortably. "Mr. Malfoy offered you a very useful chance for advancement, glory, power; he would have been…"

"He wouldn't have been any real friend," Harry retorted. "He only wanted to use me."

"He could have been of use to you, don't you understand that?" Snape's voice was sounding strained by something akin to denial of an inner guilt.

"You don't pick your friends because they can do something for you," Harry shot back. "You do it because you care about them, and they care about you. That's it."

Snape looked down, and muttered, "We're not exactly on friendly terms, Potter. So…why did you…get me out of the wire, back there?"

Harry exhaled. "Anybody would have done that…"

"No, they would not have," he answered. "Not unless they sought to gain something, and you know by now you're not going to get any special favors from me…:

"And you know by now I'm not looking for any," he huffed.

"No," he conceded lowly. "Then I suppose…you were just being who you are."

"Yeah." The boy turned his attention to the cat in the cardboard box. "Think Angelfang might like to watch TV, too?"

"The abominable snowman will probably give her nightmares," he mumbled, observing the creature make its appearance on screen.

"Eh, she's too hard-edge for nightmares!"

Snape stretched a little. "Hard-edge people have nightmares."

"Seriously, this movie isn't really terrifying!" he protested. "I mean, we've been through worse at school!"

Snape shrugged. "You don't know the half of...oh, Potter, what…careful, you'll jostle her like that…"

But Harry had already settled the cat-in-the-cardboard snugly on the sofa so all three could see the picture together. She just meowed rather weakly but not without interest. "See, she likes movies."

Snape grumbled inarticulately, but let it go, anyway.

The time passed inoffensively enough. Rudolph melted into some type of low-budget Hallmark drama about pre-fabricated romance on an American western ranch around Christmas time, involving actors who looked like their hair had never experienced western wind nor their clothes western dust. Then something came on that perplexed Snape, but Harry explained was a space opera spin-off involving strange hairy creatures known as Ewoks, which Snape insisted had to be from the same sterling special effects backroom studio that created Rudolph's abominable snowman.

Somewhere in the course of the duration, Snape found that he was snarking into the void, for Harry had fallen asleep on the couch. He stared at the sleeping child for a spell, feeling strangely at peace in that moment, and it almost frightened him. It was so unfamiliar, and he knew it couldn't last. But there was still something strangely comforting about not being quite so alone on that dark Christmas night, with the TV rambling on with nonsensical holiday specials, and a table littered with half-eaten bits of neighborly leftovers, and this boy he had come so very close to hating slumbering on the couch next to him, with his hand still resting snugly in his purring cat's fur.

Snape shook his head as he noted the way Harry's glasses slid down his nose, and dutifully took them off him. He decided preventative measures were in order, lest the boy crack his skull on a wall through visual impairment, resulting in subsequent medical bills. So he started to breathe on the lenses and wipe them off with a handkerchief he had stuffed in his coat.

Harry stirred. "What…what are you doing?" he queried, rubbing his eyes.

"Attempting to remedy these spectacles of filth," he replied, wiping them off and slipping them back over the boy's eyes.

"Oh…wow," Harry yawned. "That…helped. Everything's a lot clearer now."

"Brilliant observation." Straightening the specs just so, the teacher's hand randomly brushed back a loose piece of the student's messy black hair…and ran over the scar on his forehead by accident.

"Ouch," Harry yelped softly.

"It…still hurts?"

"Sometimes," he mumbled. "Like when you touch it." He looked into his eyes through those newly cleaned glasses. "It'll always hurt, won't it?"

"Probably," he admitted. "But…hurt is not the strongest thing you will feel in your life, Potter. You'll…have a life, and a family, and…you won't be…like me."

"What if…" Harry paused. "I…get killed?"

Snape winced at the boy's frank realization of what might come.

 _So…he was not so oblivious to the dangers flying about him, after all…_

"You…won't," Snape stated firmly. "I might, and lots of others might, but you're the boy who lived, and you bloody better remember it, if you value your parents' sacrifice at all. You're going to keep on living after we're all dead and gone, Potter. You'll have a life. So help me…"

He forced back a primal emotion rising up inside him.

 _Lily, I swear, so help me…_

"I can't imagine you dying," the boy rasped. "It would be so weird…I mean…you're tough…really tough…"

"Believe it or not, I am human," he retorted. "And humans, try as they might, cannot cheat death. Trying to outwit it only quickens their own undoing."

Harry turned his eyes down. "Maybe it won't happen for a long time, though."

"It's not as if anyone would go into deep grieving over it," he scoffed. "I believe house Gryffindor might even throw a party…"

"Stop, don't say that," the boy whispered, wrapping his own arms around himself for comfort. "What do you think we are? Death-eaters?"

Snape stiffened. "What do you know of them?" he spat. "They are not so very far from anyone else…just a little more lost…a little more accustomed to the depth of the dark. They weakened for the shine of power, some time or other, and the glory of the night entranced them. Then the moon faded, and all the stars fell, and they were trapped, without any hope of escape."

Harry stared at him, seeming to know without knowing. "So they can never be forgiven, then?"

Snape shrugged. "And who would ever forgive them?" He faced the boy. "If you…met a death-eater, one who…had a part, even an indirect one, in your parents' deaths, and who…regretted it with all his strength, you…you still would not forgive him. You know that, Potter. You couldn't do it. And if I were you, believe me, I wouldn't."

Harry nodded in reluctant admittance. "I suppose you're right. I…I'd hate him really badly." Then slowly, some light of epiphany came into his eyes. "But…but then…if I didn't forgive…I don't suppose I could ever celebrate Christmas again. And I wouldn't like to…never celebrate it again. Because that's what it's about, you know? It's about a really dark night that everyone thought would go on forever, and then…a star comes out again, and shows people the way to get through. And it's really bright, and it sparkles, like light on glitter…"

Snape shut his eyes tight and turned down his head. He wanted so much to hide within himself. But he could not. He wanted to tell the boy how stupid he was. But he could not. "So now you're going to give me a Sunday school lesson, is that it?"

Harry shrugged. "I used to hate church when the Dursley's made me go. I think they just went to look good, like, try and be all respectable or something. But they'd get all dressed up nice, and make me wear my cousin's old worn-out things that I didn't fit in, so everyone gave me dirty looks. And the vicar, he didn't care for me, I don't think. Uncle Vernon made some sort of donation to him, I think, and told him I was very bad."

Snape blinked. "I…never had anything good to wear either. We were never churched."

He remembered back when he had been less than Harry's age, and sometimes he'd just go out to watch the people on Sunday, coming out of the church building. They were from the better side of town, usually, Lily's side of town, and if any of them spotted him they'd do their best to chase him off. Because he was dirty, and rude, and he stared too much, and his clothes were too old and too loose because he was scrawny and ill-fed on course bread, and had too course a tongue, and they said his eyes were dark, and he was born of sin, and suffering for it…and his face was smudged, often bruised, and he reeked of chemicals from the factory…

 _But Lily, when she had seen him waiting for her to come out of church, would run over and hug him, anyway…_

"I guess the church people wouldn't have liked either of us overly much," Harry concurred.

"Apparently their god is eager for see the pews full up with fine, pure souls in their Sabbath best," he sneered. "A god made in their own image and likeness, who takes one look at you, and spits you out of his mouth. Yes, that gives them all quite a lot to sing praises about, doesn't it? A divine being who prospers his own, all polished clean and unbroken, lest you be accursed."

Harry was quiet for a moment, then mumbled, "Not the baby."

"What baby?"

"The one at Christmas," he clarified. "The one half the world is making a fuss over right about now. Well, it wasn't like that in the beginning. He barely had anything to wear at all, and it was cold and everything. And it was in a barn. Barns are freezing this time of year. But his parents were just that broke, and there was nowhere else to go. And who found out first about the whole thing? Shepherds, and they couldn't have been dressed so great."

"Keen memory," his teacher scoffed.

"I…I hated church, but I liked the story," Harry explained. "On Christmas, they usually didn't want me in their pew, because their family had come in and…well, they just didn't want me. So…so I went and did my own thing. And they had a Nativity set off to the side, and I used to look at it, and I used to think, well maybe, had all these preachy types been back then, they'd have tossed him and his mum and dad right out of here, too. They'd have thought themselves too good for them. And do you think they would have let the shepherds in? Not a chance!"

Snape looked down, and said in a low whisper, "And the shepherds…were sore afraid."

"Yeah, but they didn't have to be," Harry responded softly. "Because Christmas was for them as much as anybody. Maybe more for them than anybody, because they were more like the baby than all those rich people all over the place who missed out on it altogether. That's why the angels showed up out in the field instead in some manor house or something. They were the ones the baby wanted to meet first, even if they were scruffy and broken up. And those other people who thought they so bloody perfect, well…they're the ones who'd get spit out, not the other way around."

Snape shook his head. "The meek inheriting the earth is an exceedingly unpromising prospect. The good ones always seem to finish last…makes some sense of my own decisions, does it not?"

"I don't know. Everybody's out celebrating a poor kid born in a barn, even if they forget why they're doing it. Maybe that's the start of something after all." Harry smiled slightly. "You know, when I was little, I used to think…" His voice trailed off.

"What?" Snape queried darkly.

"You'll start jabbing at me."

"Surely you've grown accustomed to that by now," the man sighed. "Now out with it."

He turned his eyes down. "I just wondered if parents were as happy to have me as the parents in the crèche…even though I…messed everything up for them in the end."

Snape felt his heart thump like a rock hitting the ground as the boy looked at him, a painful innocent wondering in his eyes. Then Harry asked him hesitantly, "Do you think…maybe they'd have thought well of me?"

He felt caught off-guard. "I…your mother…do you really question whether she loved you, boy? What more proof do you need than the cause of her death?" The child looked pale, and Snape added softly, "It's not those who die in such a way who should be pitied, but rather those…who are unable to save those dearest to them. They are the ones who suffer the greatest agony. Your mother…valued your life above her own."

"And…my dad?" the boy questioned hesitantly. "Are you sure he wouldn't be all mad at me on account that…that my mum…they both died because of me? Maybe…maybe he'd rather I just got killed, then he could just have another kid with her and…"

"Enough of this nonsense," Snape spat, feeling churned up inside. "You both would have been…obnoxiously inseparable."

"Yeah?"

"Incalculably obnoxiously," he affirmed. "He would have spoiled you rotten, without a doubt, and been one of those fathers who throws himself headlong into molding a child into his own image."

"But…but do you think that's the same as…?"

Snape clutched the arm of the sofa, and gesticulated defeatedly with his other hand. "He would have…cared for you as an extension of his own life, his own soul. He would have done everything in his power to make you happy and secure and successful." He rolled his eyes and added, "And, upon learning of our past…run-ins, he most likely would have pulled all sorts of strings at Hogwarts to have me fired and blacklisted from ever darkening the door of a schoolroom again."

Harry swallowed awkwardly. "I…I wouldn't have wanted that, exactly."

"Oh, no?"

"No," Harry affirmed.

Snape gazed at the boy and then shook his head. "You strange, silly creature."

Just then there was a knocking at the door.

"Merlin's blood, who on earth would be out at this hour?" Snape grumbled as he reluctantly stood. "It must be nearly midnight…"

Opening the door, he was surprised to find Mrs. Wimpleton, accompanied by three of the local men who frequently went house to house Christmas caroling. Among them was the irascible Mr. Chillingsworth, owner of one of the local taverns.

"Madam, what in heaven's name are you doing out at this late hour?" Snape demanded. "And accompanied by these annually tuneless locals, no less?"

"Now, Severus Snape, don't go sharpening your tongue on them until you've heard them out," she lectured.

"There's nothing I care to hear," he snapped. "We've tacitly agreed not to engage in any superfluous Christmas rituals, and my house has always been passed by when it comes to caroling. I see no reason why…"

"It was my request that they should come," she returned resolutely. "These three came; the others who would not make the venture with me."

"And well they should not have," Snape spat. "I have no interest in them, and they have none in me! We are best apart from each other lest…"

"Hold, you hear me out," she commanded authoritatively, bashing her cane down on the step. "I am fairly newer to this town than others, having only resided here for some ten years. But there are others…with longer histories, I feel. And perhaps, just perhaps, this is a fair enough night to help bring them into light."

"So you're all trying to clear your precious consciences, is that it?" he sneered, scanning the little group. "Because you pity the wretch who wastes away in here. Well, isn't that it?"

"No, we don't pity you," Chillingsworth piped up unexpectedly. He turned his eyes down and scuffled his feet. "We pity…ourselves. Because we treated a boy and his mother like dirt when they needed a fair shake. We blamed him for what his father was, instead of giving him a chance to stand on his own. And I think we fine folk were quicker to condemn than to forgive."

Snape swallowed back a surge of shock quickly followed by a flush of passion, thinking of how his neglected mother had died alone, without a soul to comfort her, so many years before, when he was away at school. "And you think you can ever undo what was done?" he rasped.

"No. Neither, I suppose, can you undo what you've done in the past."

Snape closed his eyes. All they knew was that he had gotten in with "a bad crowd" in his teens, only to come back to his senses after Lily's mysterious death. They could not even imagine how far it all had gone, and the burdens he carried.

"So bringing us back to the point," he redirected, "what are intentions now if nothing can undo what was done?"

"I guess we're asking a favor," muttered Mr. Chillingsworth.

"What…?"

The tavern-keeper pulled out a fiddle from under his coat. "Just don't slam the door in our faces till we're done."

Snape opened his mouth, a bunch of garbled thoughts rushing through his mind, but was silenced by the sound of the string instrument, playing the beginning of a tune he had not heard since his childhood. It was from the one time Lily had had tried to drag him along caroling with her, but the others in the group had scoffed at his patched up coat and his "evil eyes" (he had always had a bad habit of staring, and it haunted people even when he was nine). So Lily had pulled him away from the haters, and walked him most of the way home, and sung him the Christmas tune the fiddler had started playing before Snape got kicked out of the group. And he had loved, loved, loved, the fact that she had sung it especially for him.

And now, so many years later, in front of his door, he was hearing it again:

"Shepherds, arise!

Be not afraid

With hasty steps repair

To David's City's

Stable there

To our blest infant there

For us a savior come on earth

For us His life he gave

To save us from eternal death

And to raise us from the grave…"

Before he could think of a way to properly respond, crossed between automatic snark and melancholic sentiment, Mrs. Wimpleton stepped forward and placed something in his hands, a paper parcel. He could feel through the wrapping…he knew what they were.

"How…?"

"Well, Mr. Germsley and I felt that perhaps your efforts on behalf of technical enlightenment on the rooftop today merited more than an out-of-commission air freshener, so we tracked it down together," she explained. She smiled sweetly. "Happy Christmas, young man."

Snape swallowed, blinked, and then mumbled under his breath an uncharacteristically sincere "Thank you." Then he slowly closed the door, and for a moment just rested his forehead against it, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

"What did she give you?" Harry questioned.

Snape turned, brought back to reality, and then laid the parcel down on the end table. Slowly, he started to unwrap it, and revealed the missing pieces of his mother's prized tea set. And inside the cups were packets of flavored tea.

Harry could not help but feel his heart swell as his teacher started to delicately place the cups and saucers this way and that on the table, gazing at them with wide-eyed excitement of a child who unexpectedly finds the present he wanted, but was to cautious to ask for in his letter to Father Christmas, waiting for under the tree.

When all the tea set pieces werein place, a hard lump suddenly rose in Snape's throat and his hands trembled a little, clanking the last cup as it he set it down. He could not help but picture his mother lovingly doing the very same thing with her prized possessions in the midst of poverty, so many years before…

"You alright?" Harry queried.

"Of course…brilliant one," he muttered, but could not prevent a shiver from running down his spine. He felt the boy toss something towards him. It was the hideous patchwork throw blanket Harry had been using during the night. "What…what are you…?"

"You looked kinda cold."

His eyes shot to the ceiling. "I – am – _not_ …"

"Well, it was just a thought."

"Did I mention I'm quite capable to taking care of my own needs without student intervention, thank you very much?"

"Yep," Harry conceded, and nestled back into the couch sleepily.

Snape exhaled, and tossed half of the monster blanket over the boy, with the other half still awkwardly tangled up in his cloak.

"Wake me up if we come back in the film…" Harry murmured, drifting off to sleep.

"Look," Snape snapped. "I'm not committed to watching this horror reel all night just to unpack Dumbledore's imbecilic surprise. Especially since this thing seems to be taped in slow motion…how many of these sickening specials have we already gone through? Two? Three? Not to mention all these intermingled Hogwarts camcorder clips besides…"

But Harry was at this point sound asleep and beyond the point of comment. And within the liberal passage of some 15 minutes, Snape too fell mercifully unconscious as _A Muppets Special Christmas Carol_ began to run.


	7. Chapter 7: The Running of the Deer

Chapter 7: The Running of the Deer

Snape and Harry woke up in the morning to the pleasant realization that "holiday tape" had run its course, and the uncomfortable realization that they were both somewhat entangled in the same throw blanket! Once they were freed from the creepily close proximity to one another, Snape shuffled into the kitchen in search of something to toss together for breakfast.

Unfortunately, as he rummaged through the cupboard, he dismally realized that their food supply was at an end. He was loathe to purchase a restock, as they'd be returning to school the following day and he did not wish to carry food stuffs with him. But nevertheless, he realized the necessity. Hence, he decided on the necessity of going to the town's small market to pick up basic groceries. And as usual, Harry automatically decided to tag along.

It was a fairly long hike into town, and Snape spent most of it muttering under his breath about how low his finances were. Once they made it to the fairly run-down main street, consisting of an assortment of basic buildings like the town bureau office, which meshed with the tiny police department and library, they made their way into the small general store with limited lighting and refrigerating, and far too many empty shelves to be respectable.

"Do we have to have oatmeal again?" Harry inquired, observing Snape's beeline towards the boxes.

"I wouldn't complain about the fare, if I were you," Snape growled, "or I might decide to forego the entire expedition."

Harry sighed. "I just…well, it's Boxing Day, and I just thought we could do something a little different, that's all."

"Oh, so we're going by gourmet Potter tastes, is that it?"

"French toast wouldn't be too crazy, would it?"

Snape rolled his eyes.

"What?" Harry retorted. "It's not French snails or something expensive or weird!"

"There's no chance of me making anything so frivolous for the likes of…"

"Fine, you can make the oatmeal, and I can make the toast! Then we split it half and half, how about that?"

"You…cooking?" Snape blurted in disbelief. "You're a flippin' disaster when it comes to mixing ingredients!"

"Well, French toast batter can't explode like a potion, at least!"

Snape shook his head, but seemed to be slowly relenting all the same, and grunted, "If you get one speck of batter splattered where it shouldn't be, you'll be sorry."

Harry smiled and accepted the week-old cheap bread Snape shoved at him, as well as a few packets of French toast mix.

"Hey, question: do you have…peanut butter in your ice box?"

Snape looked at him blankly. "Why do you ask?"

"Well…I was thinking. Even though there aren't any deer here anymore, there are still other animals. Like…birds and squirrels and rabbits and hedgehogs…"

"What a stimulating survey of the surrounding wildlife index," Snape remarked, with as much enthusiasm as a hibernating groundhog. "You should become a zoologist."

Harry huffed. "Yeah, fine, okay, whatever…can we just maybe get some peanut butter, and maybe a little bird seed?"

"In case you've noticed, I'm not exactly rolling in funds at present…"

"I mean, just a little bit, just to do it once before we leave."

"Whatever put this notion so strongly in your stubborn little head?"

"Well…you did."

Snape blinked, realizing that the boy spoke truth. Then he rolled his eyes again, towards the birdseed section, and Harry promptly snatched up a small bag and a jar of peanut butter.

Walking back from town, they had to cross the woods again. Harry spotted a tangled barb-wire fence wending its way in between the trees. "Hey, what's the deal with that?" he queried. "I thought you said this was free walking land, that no one owned it."

"It is," he confirmed. "It always has been. But is it not a regular thing for man to try and lay claim to that which is not his, to steal it from the right of nature, and the free standing of other men?" Then Snape squinted, seeing where part of the fence was twisted and torn, and a swath of it seemed to have been cut out.

"So," Snape sniffed haughtily. "It does seem that I've caught the remnants of the vagrant onslaught last evening…"

Suddenly the whole fence vibrated, and a soft whimpering sound made them turn to the right.

"Oh my gosh, it's a deer!" Harry realized, seeing the tan creature tangled up in the ripped wire. "I thought you said they weren't around here anymore."

"They weren't," Snape confirmed, in as much astonishment as the boy. "Or at least, they haven't been…" They drew nearer the scene, and Snape got a better look at the situation. "She's very young. Probably got separated from her own and became disoriented."

"Oh, that's awful," Harry mumbled. "She's probably scared half to death." He started to crouch down in the snow. "It's okay, it's okay…" Harry touched the little deer's neck, and she jerked. "I won't hurt you, I promise…I promise I won't…" He ran his hand along her soothingly. She seemed to calm down a little at the motion, even though she was still breathing heavily. "You're a pretty girl," he complimented her. "You're a really pretty girl…"

Watching Harry stroking the injured young doe, and the look of fear that melted into a tentative trust in her eyes, Snape found himself overwhelmed by his own lack of realization, blinded by a searing mix of bitterness and pride. He was seeing her, all over again, as clear as day…not the boy he had known so long ago, who looked so much like him, and took to tormenting the vulnerable for pleasure and to make himself seem so much the stronger. No, no…Harry was like…

He saw the boy focus on the twisted barb wire stabbing into her, saw him reach his hand out to pull it off of her, just as he had done for his least favorite teacher the day before. But Snape gripped him by the wrist before he could touch it.

"You little fool," he grumbled. "You'll tear apart your hands all over again like that. This job requires gloves and wire cutters…"

"But she's hurting, and it'll take ages to get that stuff!"

As if to confirm what Harry just said, the little deer made a soft whimpering noise and shivered, her body pressed up against the snow.

Harry grabbed Snape's sleeve earnestly. "Professor…please!"

Again, the boy tried to reach for the barbed wire, and again the man blocked him. But before Harry could protest, he saw Snape pull up his sleeves, with single tugs, very professionally. The only other times Harry had seen him do that was when he was about to grab a daydreaming student by the scruff of the neck and force their face into their text book.

But now, to Harry's shock, he reached out his hand and placed it right over those twisted barbs, working them free bit by bit. The deer struggled. "Keep her calm," he instructed through clenched teeth.

Harry did so, going back and stroking her neck, telling her she'd be free soon. But his eyes were still on the professor, working on untangling the wire, a little at a time. He made no fuss about it, no grand show, just kept at it with a silent determination to complete the job. Every barb, Harry knew, was cutting him. But his teacher did not react. He just seemed to accept the pain as a matter of course, and continue on with steady hands.

And in that instant, Harry recognized a side of his teacher he had never acknowledged before. He was brave. Not like a Gryffindor, full of grand gestures and reckless pluck, but boiled down to bare bones bravery, the kind that has a job to do, even an unpleasant one, and does it with an unsung dignity. A kind that recognizes duty to others, even if he holds little affection for them; that uses rationality, and yet still is willing to pay the price without receiving thanks or recompense. Because it's part of the job, the everyday grind of living, the grind of being too human to turn away. And in the end, perhaps, that was the sort of bravery that made the world turn round.

Just then, the sound of boots crunching in the snow was heard, and a gruff voice bellowed, "Who be ya on my land?"

It was an older man around sixty or so years, with bushy gray eyebrows, yellow teeth, and an ancient-looking shotgun pointed straight at them.

"McGinty, you know damn well this is common land," Snape stated as calmly as possible. "It has been since before the towns gained their charters. There should be no place for property claims or barbed wire here."

"Don't give me no high-falootin' excuses! Get yerself and that scrawny kidda off o' my turf!"

"Look, we're just trying to help the doe! She's hurt!" Harry protested.

"What the hell do I care? Better off dead than eating out our gardens come spring!"

"What a creep!" Harry blurted impulsively, earning him a harsh look from Snape.

"Don't you go talking back to your elders, mangy pup, lest you get your brain blown through!" McGinty pointed the rifle at Harry menacingly.

Snape got to his feet, standing in front of the firearm. "You will not threaten the boy," he growled. "He may have a way of working his mouth, and I might have the right to tan his hide for it often enough, but you will not threaten a student under my charge."

"Student, pah!" the man spat. "Think you're some fancy professor, eh? And you, reared up on the spit-side of the Spinneries, with a drunkard father and an Irish mother wrinkled from the wash-buckets? You can't put on no act with us!"

Now Snape's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Shut your filthy trap."

"Don't you go turning your nose up at me! We're wise to ya! No authority have you got on us…"

Suddenly Snape lunged, taking him by surprise, and with unexpected strength yanked the shotgun from his hands and thrust it away.

"Then know this," Snape snarled. "If I was reared up by the spinners, I have learned to strike back by the spinners, and by the factory yard. And I can splinter your gob if I so take the notion. That authority any man, no matter how near the dirt he is, should bow to!"

Harry's mouth was hanging open, and so was McGinty's. But the landowner recomposed himself rapidly. "You think you're a winner in the fights?" he challenged. "You and your tastes for the girls up town?"

Snape visibly swallowed back something primal. "Do not…"

"It's my land, and I'll say whatever the hell I be wanting to!" he challenged. "You know what it be? You weren't good enough for her, is what! She went off with the lad with the winning words and the coins to his name, what would she be dallying about with chemical scum like you?"

Snape took a step forward, then stopped, a vein in his neck purple and pulsating with suppressed wrath. "Get – away – now…" he whispered, the way snakes whisper before they strike.

"Fine by me, I'm gettin' alright," McGinty growled, reluctantly turning to leave, realizing he was no match for the younger man's strength if it came to a knock-down, drag-out fight. "Every blasted body with a lick of sense gets itself away from you in the end! There's a bad omen on ya, and the little missy knew it too! Seems it fell on her, like it or not, in the end!"

Snape remained where he stood, almost statuesque, as the man wandered away from them. When he turned back to Harry, his face had a strange unreadable expression cut into it, like the waves cuts into the coastal rocks. He was seeing into the past again…

 _The beginning of first year at Hogwarts. The sorting. Gryffindor. Slytherin. Sitting at a different table, away from her. Her assuring they'd still be friends. The boy with glasses and the foxy grin, who bragged about how many presents his parents bought him, when others were scraping and straining just to get by. A push in the hallway, and papers flying everywhere. "I'm going to take your friend," he taunted. "I'll get her away from you, chemical scum, you'll see…"_

Snape blinked and brought himself back to the present. There was something in his eyes that seemed sick with himself, perhaps for the binding, or perhaps for the loosing, of such memories that still stung him like acid. It was too easy to carry them on into that very moment, to use them as a shaft or shield. But he was losing the stomach for it all. He was just…sick and tired. And silently he went back down on one knee and continued his work to free the deer.")

When she was finally free, she started struggling again, having difficulty getting back up, and Harry started to guide her gently. "Easy…easy, girl…just take it easy…there you go…"

The little doe got up on wobbly knees, squeaked, and very nearly fell down again. "Whoa, whoa…" The boy braced her a little. "It's okay, gotcha…" He looked over his shoulder at the grocery bag in the snow. "Hey, do you think…maybe I could give her a packet of our oatmeal? I mean, she's kinda thin…probably hasn't eaten in a long time…"

"Do what you want," Snape rasped, his eyes fixated on his own bleeding hands.

Harry didn't press it, just opened up the box and then the packet and poured the contents into his cupped hand. He held it under her nose, and she first shied away, then slowly she started to sniff at the oats, then started to munch on them. Some of the oats got in Harry's sleeve, and she reached across to nibble at them. The boy laughed and petted her affectionately along the neck.

Then he caught sight of Snape watching him with a faraway look on his face, like he was witnessing something he had seen once before. And then Snape turned his eyes down to his hands, no doubt stinging something terrible from the wires. And Harry thought his heart was stinging far worse from the words spoken by the man with the gun.

Harry felt sorry for him all of a sudden and inquired softly, "Hey, would you like to…uh, y'know…pet her?"

Snape blanched. "What makes you think I want to do that?" he blurted defensively.

"I dunno," Harry admitted, "but…you did save her from the fence, and maybe…maybe she'd like it…?"

"Not from me," he grunted, shuffling to his feet. "She'd be gone like a flash at my touch."

Harry squinted. "Why?"

" _Because_." The man exhaled and shut his eyes. And he felt his upper arm…burn him. "I am too…cunning, Potter."

"But you're brave, too," he offered quietly.

"You don't…understand." Snape paused, then continued softly. "In ages past, the animals ruled this world. The laws of nature were savage, and yet…they were not evil, for the animals had no capacity for it. What they did, with red tooth and claw, they did according to instinct, not reason nor will. It was to keep a balance in check, keep all in things according to their proper state. When Man came…he was meant to be higher than that, to be better than that, and yet instead he fell beneath the level of beast, and embraced evil. Don't you know animals can read how far gone a man is, especially the deer?"

Harry looked perplexed. "But we helped her. And she seems to trust me."

"That's different," he said with a shiver. "You and I…are different."

"But…if she trusts me, and I trust you, there shouldn't be a problem."

Snape snorted. "Trust? Really, Potter? After what we've been through?"

"Yeah," Harry responded quietly. "Is there…some reason I…I shouldn't?"

Snape swallowed hard. _Too much reason, much, much too much…_

"Look, won't you…just try, like once with her?" the boy coaxed as the doe finished the last of the oats in his hand.

"Why should I?"

" _Because_." Harry eyed him hard. "You won't know unless you _try_."

He just stared as the boy moved back a little from the deer. She seemed a bit confused by what was going on, and Snape felt the very same confusion in his soul.

"Try talking to her," Harry suggested.

"What…what the hell would I say?"

"Tell her she's pretty."

"You just told her that," he huffed.

"Yeah, but…girls like to hear it."

Snape shifted uncomfortably, but then his eyes met hers again, and something inside him began to thaw, ever so slowly. She was so innocent, so pure, like the fresh-fallen snow, and her eyes were clear, without guile. He found himself crouching down in the snow.

Very slowly, he started to reach his hand out towards her. She backed away a little, and Snape stopped, just leaving his hand as far out as he had stretched it. He felt his mouth go dry. Then, also very slowly, she took a step towards him. Then another. When she was close enough, he touched her nose gently, and both of them winced. But she didn't run off this time, just…studied him.

 _Was she seeing all? Was she seeing all his sins written in the sand, seeing the omen that he was, the curse that seemed to come to everything his heart had ever encompassed, who had ever taken the risk to let him know the precious feeling of touch?_

A little blood trickled from his hand onto her nose, staining her fur a muddy red, and he shivered. "Sorry, I…sorry…" His throat tightened. _What was he doing, apologizing? Apologizing for his blood, always staining the innocent?_

"You're…a pretty girl…" he said it at last, and the words were fully his, coming from the truest part of himself. "A very pretty girl…"

Then before he knew what was happening, she came up and nuzzled his face for a brief moment. He felt her soft fur and wet nose and he let out a breath held, hissing through his teeth.

 _Was that her way of showing gratitude for being saved by imperfect hands that were hurting-hard and bleeding all over?_

"See?" Harry said, a slight sad smile on his face. "She likes you, after all."

Snape looked down awkwardly as the doe finally backed away, and after a last glance at Harry, sprinted off into the woods beyond them.

The professor stood up silently, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and gestured with his chin for the boy to follow him. As they trudged back to the house, Harry spoke up again.

"So…so you're like, half Irish?"

Snape gave him a death glare.

"What?" Harry countered. "That's what he said!"

"Just because someone says something doesn't give you the automatic right to repeat it."

"But…well, it kinda makes sense. I mean, you do have a temper."

"You're stereotyping is unappreciated."

"Well, it's true! Ask anyone in your class!"

Snape just shook his head in annoyance, and scattered a pile of dead leaves with his boot absentmindedly.

"So…would you really have fought him if he didn't back off?" Harry inquired further.

Snape shrugged. "Might have done."

"So you can fight like a muggle? No magic at all?"

"You think of me as a one-trick pony, don't you?" he scoffed. "Mind you, this is the world in which I was shaped, rage man or devil ever so much. To survive in this cursed place, you must have had some brutality in you, some ability to claw and bite and kick and strike, and not care for the fineries of civilized men. I've been bloodied in the factory yards before, and I've bloodied back, to the best of my ability."

"Then…why didn't you hit him when he…?" Harry stopped short, but Snape knew what he was going to say, anyway.

"Listen, boy," he ground out, holding up his hands, still bleeding, and shaking ever so slightly. "I have learned… _control_. I have learned…there are those destined to act with the grandest form of show in this world, to achieve greatness…and then there are those destined to burn themselves out in the shadows, and in blood, in emptiness, and in the cold. And they must have the greatest control—those who live with the dark and wait for it to have the last word."

Harry blinked, not quite sure what to make of all that, but sincerely wanting him to feel better. "When we get back to the house, I'll…I can help you…make all the stuff, so you don't hurt your hands worse." He held up the bag of groceries indicatively.

"You?" Snape huffed perplexedly, letting his hands fall at his side.

"Well, if you instruct me nice and calmly," Harry added.

"Oh, I see," he spat. "A clause."

As they got nearer the house, they ran into none other but Mrs. Wimpleton, coming back from the post office with her mail.

"Why, whatever happened to your hands?" she gasped upon observing the blood stains on Snape's sleeves.

"Nothing," he lied.

"We rescued a deer!" Harry spoke up.

Snape grumbled under his breath.

"Well, you two seem to make quite a team, don't you?" she said brightly.

Now Snape looked positively sick. "We'll probably wind up in mortal conflict in the kitchen, never fear," he assured, gesturing at the bag of groceries Harry was holding.

"Oh, well, you can't be doing work like that with your hands all sliced up, and you yelling at the poor boy for every little thing he does with the cooking certainly won't help the food go down any easier!"

"I'm afraid I can't afford a gourmet chef," he snarked dismally.

She huffed. "That's it, I'm helping…"

"What?!"

"It has to be done…"

"But I don't want you in my kitchen!" he declared, most rudely.

"SEVERUS SNAPE." She gave him killer look that matched his own. "Not – another –word. I'm going in that kitchen, and I'm making lunch, and there's nothing more to be said about it. Do I make myself clear?"

To Harry's surprise, this rebuke somehow succeeded. Perhaps it had something to do with the tea set she'd produced the night before, or maybe because some primal reality clicked in, equating her to the scolding mother and him to the chastened child.

The fact that Mrs. Wimpleton veritably forced Snape to lie down on the couch after washing and bandaging his hands led to him falling asleep by accident while she and Harry started to cook the oatmeal and French toast. By the time he woke up, he found that Gerald Germsley was also in kitchen somehow, and with a cardboard box of take-out Chinese food picked up from a tech mission in Birmingham.

Snape scanned the table, now littered with far too much food. "How the hell are we going consume all these victuals?" he demanded. "There's enough here to feed a regiment!"

"We're working on it, mate," Germsley assured, shoveling a forkful of French toast with drizzled honey into his mouth, followed by a bite of eggroll.

"Yeah, I'm sure we'll make at least some headway," Harry assured, munching on a mouthful of rice crackers, followed by a sugary Chinese dumpling.

Snape rolled his eyes. "Leave it to human vacuum cleaners…"

Just then, he heard the cell phone beckoning him from the other room, to the un-melodious tune of "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time" that automatically became the ring tone this time of year, against its owner's will.

"You…still have service…?" Harry inquired, as the last time he saw Snape use it was during their road trip the previous summer.

"For emergencies, yes," Snape conceded. "So…if you'll pardon me… _guests_ …"

With that parting sarcastic shot, he wandered out into the living room and snatched it up from the end-table, just desperate to end the infernal holiday ditty from gyrating any longer than it had to. "What the hell…?" He squinted, waiting for the name of the caller to come up on the Smartphone screen, but all he got was "unavailable." So he just decided to take his chances with any bill collectors and survey takers that might be trying to haunt him, and pressed the answer button.

"Yes, who is it?" he snapped irritably, holding the phone to his ear.

"Greetings, Severus!"

"I was wondering when you might make a check-up call, Albus." Snape rolled his eyes. "So, what in the name of Merlin was that imbecilic video recording adventure supposed to impart to the helpless viewers? A sense of harmony, you said? More like a ten-hour-long headache! It must surely count as some form of cruel and unusual form of in-house torture! "

"Ah, but you both did feel united in that headache, didn't you?" the headmaster offered brightly.

"That's…pathetic," Snape sighed, slumping down on the couch.

"Well, all the same," Dumbledore chirped. "How is the boy doing? I trust he's still among the living?"

"He's a stubborn creature, almost like a weed, not given to dying easily," Snape remarked wryly. "Stubborn as his mother could be at the same age. They surely would have…made quite the pair." He smiled slightly, fondly, in spite of himself. "Do you remember in third year, when she put on all this makeup without a mirror, and nearly got herself thrown out of class for breaking the rules?" He chuckled a little. "Some Ravenclaw girl gave it to her, and she was so excited about it, she didn't bother learning how much to use. When I tried wiping it off her in the hallway, she just about cracked me across the face for it, and wouldn't talk to me for a full week. She was sweet, though…when we made up, she sat on the wall and we had lunch together outside, so we wouldn't be split up by the tables…"

"Severus," interrupted the voice on the other side of the phone, grave and ghost-like this time.

"Yes…?"

There was a long silence. Then words that stung.

"Don't get too attached."

Snape's train of innocent reminiscence was fully derailed and he tasted bitterness at the back of his throat. "Attached?" he croaked.

"Yes, just so. I knew that if you ever came to see her in the boy, you could not help but fall into that. You have not mentioned her in years, not mentioned her since…until now. I know you, Severus. You have never done things by half measures."

Snape clenched his injured hands, letting the hurt run up his arms as Dumbledore continued.

"But your duties make such a potential attachment not only precarious to the cause, but unhealthy for you, in the end. The boy has a destiny he must fulfill, and so do you…"

"I don't need to be reminded of my duties," Snape growled resentfully.

"Everyone needs reminding, every so often, Severus," Dumbledore continued, using a faux gentility now that set Snape's teeth on edge. "Even I need it sometimes. We all have some youthful attachments and flights of fancy that blether about in our heads when we are older, and sometimes cloud our thinking…"

"What do you think? It was just some tawdry little passion worked up over too many glasses of punch at the Wizarding Ball? Is that what you think she was worth to me?"

Dumbledore chuckled ironically. "Certainly not, Severus! Given your background, you've always had enough sense to be a teetotaler."

Snape twitched at the implication.

"But seriously, my dear boy, I'm only concerned for your well-being. You'll only torture yourself unnecessarily with too many thoughts of her, rekindled by the presence of..."

"You knew her," Snape whispered harshly. "You watched her grow up, taught her, worked with her. Is it possible to have known her and yet not still grieve for her?"

"We all make mistakes, Severus," the headmaster remarked, and Snape shut his eyes tight at the covert allusion to his accidental involvement in her demise. "Lily was a truly beautiful soul, a type who could not help but make the world a better place for having been here. But in the end, we must let the dead bury the dead."

"She's still…alive to me," he choked. "If she were not, do you think…I'd be doing this?"

"And what would we do without you?" he proclaimed. "Your dedication to the task of reparation is as strong as ever. You have laid down all attachments and personal goals in that pursuit, and I cannot help but have a great deal of hope for you."

"I do not desire your absolution," he retorted.

"Ah," Albus exhaled. "So perhaps you are trying to seek it from her boy, by being his protector?"

"The boy?" Snape spat, his anger flaring out violently. "You are more of a fool than I thought, if you think I care what happens to that Marauder's bilge-mouthed brat…"

Suddenly Snape sensed someone in the room with him. He turned and found Harry standing in the threshold, swallowing back the lump of pain that had formed in his throat. Then the boy quickly turned away and retreated from the room.

"Well, at least your attitude assures me my concerns for your wellbeing were misplaced," Dumbledore rambled on indulgently. "Nevertheless, in spite of your impenetrable bitterness over past events, I do believe your efforts on behalf of the cause mark you out as a good man."

Snape shuddered. "Like you, Albus?"

Another wry chuckle from the headmaster. "Oh, Severus, by the way, has the boy gotten you to take your medication as of yet?"

Something inside Snape snapped, and he pressed the "end" button on the phone before hurling it across the floor. He had a feeling the screen had been damaged. He didn't' care. There was a far deeper damage that had been done, and it made him feel disgusted with his very self.


	8. Chapter 8: The Snow It Melts the Soonest

Chapter 8: The Snow It Melts the Soonest

 _Just like his father._ Snape repeated the thought, over and over again to himself, as he lay in bed that night. Of course the boy was just that; it was in his blood, and nothing could change that. And Snape could never care for him. He could never care for anyone. No, no, it was all or nothing for him, it always had been. He had given his all once, and it died within the heart of another. He could not repeat the process. He was too broken, too bloodied.

And yet…the boy had said he trusted him. And the doe had not run away. He felt the bittersweet sense that he would have to deny it all to go on, to push back whatever secret longing he had felt rising to the surface inside himself. He could not…care. Nor grow. Nor change. He had a job to do, a mask to wear, a petty vendetta to keep faith with. And a charge to protect…or so he had always thought.

 _"Don't get too attached."_

Dumbledore's words haunted him. Snape supposed he had occasionally suspected all had not been told to him about his mission, but it never disturbed him so very much. He was doing his duty, but the child had no bearing on him personally. Or at least that was how it had started, what he had convinced himself. It was for the mother alone, not the son.

But it did disturb him now. It made him question whether he was doing it all for nothing, sacrificing his very self on a vain venture meant to crumble into dust in the end, for some great victory paid for with the price of all meaning. It shook him inside, though outside he remained stiff, cold, unfeeling…like a corpse of a bird, lying dead on the path, frozen hard in flight during the winter's rage. But his troubled dreams would not obey him…

Upon realizing that sleep would come to him no more that night, Snape sat up stiffly and squinted towards his window. It was still very dark, yet he had learned to perceive the dullness of the stars upon the snow, and the creeping of the gray pre-dawn that rose quickly to transform his surroundings. A new day. And his last day in Cokeworth for the Christmas holiday. He and his student charge would be boarding the train back to Hogwarts come noon.

Snape got up and dressed promptly. When he stepped gingerly outside his room, he caught sight of Harry still lying on the couch under the throw blanket, with Angelfang curled up alongside him. Snape felt an automatic tightening in his throat, and prepared to give him a harsh reprimand for taking her out of her bed when she was so weak. But then he heard the sound of contented purring, and realized that the boy wasn't doing her any harm. Just comforting her with gentle massaging down her fur, and talking to her.

"Maybe he'll take you up to school this year, and let me see you sometimes, like just us, when he's out or something," Harry was telling Angelfang. "I know he's never going to like me much at all, and likes me a whole lot less at school, but…I don't know. Maybe I could try harder not to rile him. Like…I know I'm not ever going to be a wiz or anything, but if I study up a bit more, and maybe try not to give him cheek as much…maybe he'll like me a little better up there…?"

Angelfang made an uncertain meow-yelp.

Harry sighed. "Yeah, you're right. I doubt he'll ever let it go. He's so on and off, like how he was on the phone…" There was a long pause. "It's been such a weird Christmas. Do you think he'll want us to act like it never happened? I mean…I know some things have got to end, like our walks and stuff…but…but…" His voice cracked a little and he pulled the cat closer. "I…I don't mind him just…being tough, and not liking me, and everything. I can live with that. It's just…" Another long pause. "I'll miss it here. Don't ever tell him that, though, okay?"

Angelfang meowed obligingly, and started purring.

Snape winced.

The boy wanted…to be wanted. That was all. He was vainly trying to figure out the magic key to unlock his teacher's mind-block with regards to him, because he had found some semblance of humanity in the man that everyone had virtually forgotten existed. Snape himself had very nearly forgotten it. And he was afraid to remember. Because, by all that was holy, it hurt.

But this was Lily's boy, afraid of being pushed away again after an accidental bond had begun to form. He didn't want to go back, but Snape felt unable to move forward. He could not, he knew he could not, or even if thought he could, he knew it was impossible…had not the headmaster himself reminded him of it? His humanity was dead, and it dare not be revived.

But…Snape could not help but feel very small, very lonely…

He cleared his throat and the boy jerked up, looking slightly guilty as his eyes flitted down to Angelfang. But Snape did not bother addressing the issue.

"Go on, time to get up," he instructed. "I…want to show you something."

"But…it's so early!"

"You'll have a damned good number of hours to sleep on the train back north," he huffed. "Now get yourself dressed. Don't want to be kept waiting."

Harry did so, wondering to himself just what was going on, or what was so important to demand his immediate attentions, when the sun hadn't even risen yet. Then Snape pointed authoritatively at the coat rack, and Harry figured they'd be going out, but where he knew not.

He continued to be perplexed as they started their walk, in the opposite direction of their usual route, heading to the higher hills to the west, farther afield from the woods and the town, higher even than the hill with the tree where Harry had put the food for the animals. They looked out over the expanse of the land running out between them and the next town, whose first lights glimmered in the distance, and whose factory was already churning out its noxious fumes for the day's work.

Then Snape's eyes flickered upward, and there was unexpected light in them.

"Can you see that?" He gestured at the last remaining star in the sky.

"Yeah," the boy answered. "It's all clear from here. High enough to clear the haze."

"Yes, yes, it always has been. It's the morning star." Snape swallowed back some of that strange excitement overtaking him. He hadn't shown anyone this place before…not like this. Not since…she went away. He felt it full of pain now. "I…showed it to her then, and I knew about it all because I had read a book on astronomy and the names of the constellations. She thought it a fine thing."

"It is," Harry agreed.

And then they were quiet again, and awkward again, and they were shuffling along aimlessly. It was quiet as the sky lightened, just boots on the snow and the trudging of hearts attuned to the aching silence. The air here smelt of frost mixed with smoke, and it was cut by the winter birds with their crying, "I have survived, I have survived…yet another day…"

And then there was another sound, one rising up deep in the throat of man. And it had a tune.

"What's that?" Harry asked.

"What's what?" Snape retorted.

"Whatever you're humming."

He shrugged. "A song. An old song."

"What are the words?"

"I'm certainly not singing it," he grunted.

"Why not?"

"Because…no good at it."

The slightly awkward, honest way he said that made Harry feel a little bad for pressing him. "Well, I'm no good at it either, but I do it sometimes anyway."

"How inconsiderate of you," the man snorted.

"But sometimes a person has to sing," Harry stated. "Like, they've just got no choice."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah. They have to…remind themselves of something."

Snape stared back at him. "And what are you trying to remind yourself of, hmm?"

"Well, that's just it," he mumbled. "You can't explain it. You've got to…sing it."

Snape turned his eyes back to the view in front of him, and then trudged on a little farther, quietly, quiet as the dawn scaring away the stars and piercing the chemical-singed air. But then, very lowly, under the fog of his breath, in a mix between speaking and singing, he let the tune emerge again, this time with words:

"The snow it melts the soonest when the winds begin to sing, and the corn it ripens fastest when the frost is settling in; I've seen a woman's anger melt betwixt the night and more; 'tis surely not a harder thing to tame a woman's scorn…"

Harry found himself pausing to ponder the emptiness that seemed to pour out of that soft, silken voice, like hoof-prints in the snow. It wavered in the pitch of the notes, wavered in strength of enunciation, wavered in everything, and yet felt like the steadiest thing ever to come forth from the man

"The snow it melts the soonest when the winds begin to sing, and the bee that flew when summer shone in winter cannot sting, and all the flowers in all the land, so brightly there they be, and the snow it melts the soonest when my true love's for me…"

Now it had become a crushing rasp, and the tune shivered in his throat. It was alive to him, real to him and the land; it seemed borne out of too many generations of suffering to survive, and of bones buried deep, deep down in the earth. He was singing it brokenly to himself, yes, and he was reminding himself…of something…

"So never bid me farewell here, no farewell I'll receive, but you may meet me at the stile and kiss and take your leave, and I'll wait here till the woodcock calls and the martin takes to wing, for the snow it melts the soonest when the winds begin to sing…"

Harry just stood there, struck by the silence of this place and the way that the song had seemed to have grown up from the ground almost, grown up rough and raw, imperfect and pounding with some ageless intensity.

"Professor," the boy addressed him.

"Yes…?"

"Did you…think my mum was pretty?"

He blinked, and after a long pause, muttered, "Very."

"Did you…ever tell her that?"

He shot up his eyes, and Harry thought he might lash out. But he didn't. He just answered quietly, sincerely, "No, I…I was ill fit for such things. I had too…rough a tongue."

"But…you were telling her yesterday, back with the doe, weren't you?"

Snape stared at the boy, seemingly shocked by his ability to read through to that palpitating wounded place that he worked so very hard to bury. Then he swallowed hard, and said so very simply, so very truly, "She was…my friend."

And Harry nodded sadly, realizing that that simple declaration explained all. "Then…she knows. She probably always has."

The man's eyes scanned the rolling hills off in the distance. "We hang onto things, all who come from this place. The land is too old to change. For good or ill, we cannot…forget…"

"But seasons change," Harry mumbled. "Like…in the song."

His teacher looked back at him. "When the wind sings, it also cuts, boy, sometimes to the heart. And how can the heart…beat again…?"

"I don't know," he mumbled. "Maybe it can cut out the parts grown bitter."

Snape blinked. "It would take…a lot of cutting, I fear. I doubt very much would be left in the end…"

"Maybe you'd be surprised."

He looked back at the boy. "You don't know…how deep it goes. I believe you would be the surprised one if I took you to see…" He paused, then gestured with his head to the east. "I'll show you."

Harry had never seen a place quite like where Snape took him. It was to the burnt-out ruins of the old factory that caught on fire almost a decade before, causing death and destruction to add to the misery of the community. The scorched building stood stark as a skeleton in the gray morning. There was a tooth-like shard of glass sticking out from one of the spaces in the wall, a place where a window must once have been.

"I worked here…for one day, in the factory," Snape told the boy. "I was younger than you are…got glass in my hand…had to…bite it out…use wax paper for the bleeding…they wouldn't pay me, said…I couldn't work like that…but it seems I never stopped working with chemicals, does it? Bottling them, or mixing them…I should be…immune to them now…" He looked bleakly at the one-time window. "You know, in these parts, there are tales told of General Ludd…and his bands of common men, put out of work by the machines, the factories…they would hide in the forest, like the outlaws of old, and then come out and…smash whatever they could, to strike back…"

A chunk of broken brick was lying on the cold ground. Snape picked it up, numbly fingering it, letting it run against the scabs and scars on his hand. Then he cast back his arm and flung it far, and let it shatter the last of the glass with a crash that was elemental in its intensity. It looked hauntingly like jewels, shimmering on the ground in the morning sun. Perhaps they were…the jewels of poverty…of pain…

But behind the building, down in a sloping field, was a stranger sight yet. Harry saw things sticking out of the ground, sticks, stones, broken brittle things, worn down by rain and weather. And his throat tightened, realizing where they were. It was a graveyard. He drew closer and squinted. Yes, he could still make out names on some of the stones…many were Irish in origin.

Snape wandered a little, seemingly absently, between the markers, but Harry realized he knew where he was bound, for after scanning briefly he stopped in front of a particularly ill-kept marker, and Harry could make out the worn names of Tobias and Eileen Snape.

His teacher's eyes glazed a little. "Some say a man would sell his soul to the devil to keep from being buried…in this place…"

The scene was the strangest, saddest, most desolate one Harry could remember. He had known the sense of haunting dread before, in the face of magic phenomena often enough, out-of-this-world sights and sounds, bizarre flights of fancy. But this…this cut far deeper. It was not for any fear of his own safety, but an oppressive weight of suffering that let him understand, all at once, the pain, raw and real, that his teacher wore about him like his black cloak.

"Do you come out here a lot?" Harry asked.

He shook his head. "Hardly at all."

The boy squinted, looking at the garbage and broken bottles and empty cans littering the ground. "Why is there all this junk on the grave?" he asked, going over instinctively and starting to clean it away.

"Because…people throw things there, things they want to get rid of…"

"Why? Why would they do that?"

He swallowed. "Because they…they…" He gestured to the ground, to the bones below the ground. "They made… _me_."

Harry's heart thumped, hard. He turned his eyes down, and again was struck by the amount of glass littering the ground in so many different directions…oh, that cursed factory glass…

"Is this where they make those snow balls?"

Snape nodded. "Some…simply have nothing else to play with. Poverty teaches them cruelty. They cannot afford fineries; only things that thrill, no matter how dark…"

"But you weren't like that, were you?"

He smirked, bitterly. "What, you think I lack the streak?"

"I don't think you strike unless you think you're striking back at something."

His face drained of what little color it had. "I wished my father dead," he spat. "What do you think of that?"

Harry blinked. "Did…did he like to…make it hurt?"

Snape felt shot to the heart by what he hated having the boy know, and he shivered. Too many memories of the beatings, the screaming of his mother, and the warm beer thrown in his face when he went to fetch his father out of the tavern as a little boy. "That's another gift from Dame Poverty. She can turn weak men…cruel..." He turned his back on the graves abruptly. "The woman here…she wanted me…to be… _educated_ ," he stated, crackle-voiced, like the crunch of dead leaves. "She said once…I was smart enough…not to be thrown in the ground here…"

"Well, she was right," Harry remarked. "I mean…you're a teacher. Head of House, even."

"Has anything changed truly?" he queried. "Are we not just so many animals clawing at each other until our bones are thrown into some pit, somewhere?"

"I don't think my mum thought so."

"She was…a rare creature, to come forth from this world, and still be more angel than animal," he whispered, gazing across the field. "She wasn't even afraid of this place. As a child, I was; I never wanted to come here…"

Truth be told, he had been even more afraid of the alehouse where his father had spent so much time. He hated the course laughter of the men, the chemical-choked throats crudely spewing vulgarities, and the thinly clad, painted women, and how his father would fondle them. He saw far more than any child should have, but he always hid it from his mother as best he could, even though she knew all too well. But that place, and in this place, felt strangely the same…they reeked of death…

"This place, I used to think, was the end of all things, like the sea ends every river," he continued. "It was just a sea of decay to me. But your mother…she brought…flowers. She spread out the petals here, let them melt among the bones and the green grass growing over them. She…she saw beauty, saw life…even in this…"

Harry gazed over at a pine tree a few paces away. He walked over to it, and started to pull off a piece from one of the low-hanging branches. This puzzled Snape.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

"I'm…I'm going to put Evergreen on the grave here," Harry said softly. "Some say it's even better than flowers, 'cause it never dies out altogether…"

"You little fool," Snape growled suddenly, causing the boy to jump. "Those buried here are not worth anything to you, nor to anybody!"

"They're _your parents_ ," Harry insisted.

" _Animals_ ," the man spat, "that mate, and spawn, and die." There was a torn shaft of pain in his eye now, a strange grim glimmer that matched the surroundings so well. "Do you not yet know the nature of this life? It's made up of futile ambition and fatal weakness, boiled down to chalk and dirt. Everything goes to the grave, everything…nothing can stop it, and nothing can raise one out of it! All that is beautiful is cursed all the sooner, cursed with a weakness that makes it sacrifice itself…for what, in the end? What are we doing now, but fooling ourselves with petty trifles to pass the time away until it is all over and done?"

Harry's face had flushed red, shocked by the outburst of despair, and a lump rose in his throat. Snape saw it, and knew what he was thinking about, all too well.

"Look, she's gone, she's dead…and nothing can bring her back, nor your damned marauding father, and that's all there is to it, understand? It's all a lie, all nothing but damned lies, the pretty stories about angels and stars…don't you know that by now? What do you think love is, but a dream that you want so badly to be real, that it breaks you up…and then ends in broken glass and moldy ground? Nothing can bring back what's been lost! Wake the hell up, and face it!"

He saw the boy's eyes, and they were hurting. Then burning. Then he saw the liquid against his eyelashes.

Snape swallowed back something, an unexpected surge of guilt overtaking him. "Boy…" He took a step towards him, and Harry automatically took a step back. The 12-year-old's eyes were wary now, and they reminded Snape cuttingly of his own eyes at that age, so quick to perceive any sudden motion that might bring him harm. And he was no doubt thinking of…the day before…and what could Snape ever say to counteract it?

"Boy…I'm not…" He didn't know how to say it, didn't even know if he wanted to, but he tried anyway. "I didn't…mean…to hurt you…"

Alright, maybe he had once. Maybe he had wanted to make him feel all the pain James Potter had inflicted on him. Maybe, in his worst moments, he had even taken perverse satisfaction in the fact that this Marauder's clone would never know his swine of a father, and that swine would never see his offspring grow up. Yes, he knew for a surety that he had.

But right now, in the Cokeworth factory graveyard, he saw no clone, no spawn, no swine. Just an orphaned little boy, with tears prickling in his emerald eyes, and a piece of matching evergreen held tight in his hand. And some sparkling piece of his precious Lily, who managed to see the best in everyone, in spite of themselves, and like some angel from heaven, bring it out in them.

And he dared to step a little closer to the child, and make an awkward motion with his hand, as if he was trying to say, "Come here…won't hurt you…"

Harry himself swallowed, then very slowly did so, coming up very, very close to him indeed. They just stood still, facing each other, like some strange standoff neither one knew how to resolve. Then, out of nowhere, something seemed to snap, and Harry Potter fell up against the much taller man in front of him in an awkward, incomplete effort at an embrace.

"What the hell…what are you…?" Snape shuddered, crouching down to the boy's height with the intent of pulling him away, but Harry was shaking so pathetically, and seemed to be forcing himself to keep his hands to himself…not to touch…

"Sorry…sorry, alright?" he whispered, clenching his fists at his side, but still not moving away from the bodily contact that he craved so deeply. "Don't…get mad…okay?"

"Potter…" Snape's voice faded into nothing, and it remained dead in the snow for what felt like forever. Then he said softly, "You can…hold, if you wish."

Harry sniffled. "You'll…you'll…mock me out…"

"No. I…" He blinked. "You can imagine…it's someone else."

"Anyone?"

"Yes."

"Even if it's…?"

Snape shut his eyes tight. Was he going to be filling in for his most hated enemy? Yet still he rasped out, "Yes."

That was the all boy needed to complete his breakdown, and Snape found himself being squeezed with intensity, and a small boy's very honest, very deep sobs falling in and out of him, his tearstained face pressed up against the man's overcoat.

Snape didn't know what to think, what to feel, but he began to wonder about the situation, almost like a science experiment. He knew about comforting cats, but children…what efforts would cause what reactions? He wondered if touching the boy would scare him…surely that's how he'd wanted his touch to be taken by his students, time and again? His hand was for disciplining, not for soothing, and certainly not to caress the boy of his archenemy. But he was still curious…how the child might react if….

He touched him. It was a light touch, just to the shoulder, but his arm still formed a sort of brace from one of his shoulders to the other. And then there was a slight shivering of the boy's frame, a squeaking catch in his throat, and he snuggled against Severus more deeply, seeming to be basking in the warmth of his own imaginings of what it felt like to belong in someone's arms. And Snape felt…sick. So sick unto the root of his heart he thought had been pulled out long ago…

"Be…alright…" the man mumbled, and stroked the boy's shoulder a little, allowing himself for one bizarre moment to let his own imagination reign, and to pretend this son of Potter was a son of his own being, born of his and Lily's love...and a conviction… _damn Dumbledore, so help me…so help me…the boy will live, while there is life enough in me to protect him…Lily, before God, so help me…_

But the man's voice, even if in its softest form, seemed to jolt Harry out of whatever dream he had been in, and Snape felt a twisting feeling in his stomach, his own attempt at make-believe shattered. He scared himself with the realization that he wanted the fantasy to last longer, to pretend that the child had truly meant the embrace not for his long-dead father, but for him instead. But it was over now…time to move on…

"Now then…now then…a few deep breaths, child," Severus instructed calmly. "It's alright, just take a few breaths…"

Harry did so, and Severus gingerly pulled him upright, breaking the contact at last. For a moment, though, they both just met each other's eyes unflinchingly, and Harry felt perplexed by the level of understanding he saw gazing back at him. Then Snape cleared his throat and dug inside his coat for a handkerchief, which he promptly pressed up against Harry's nose in his usual no-nonsense manner.

"Go on," he ordered. "Blow it out. Don't have all day…"

Harry did as instructed and watched diffidently as Snape cleaned the tears off his cheeks and the lenses of his glasses, and then stuck the handkerchief in the boy's coat pocket. Then he clicked his tongue, seeing that the boy had still not mastered his zipper yet. Half in a fussy way, half in an affectionate way, Snape brushed the bits of snow off the old coat and got the zipper working with a flick of his wrist. This brought Harry a smile in spite of himself.

Then, hesitantly, the boy looked over his shoulder, back at the grave of Tobias and Eileen Snape. Slowly he turned towards it, and with a clear determination, straight-shot yet shaky-handed, he went over and tied the sprig of Evergreen into the twine upholding the small, broken cross that served as a grave marker.

Snape just watched, with a look of some astonishment, but did not object. And when his eyes met the boy's again, he saw a glimmer of what he thought might be Christmas itself, that sparkle of something inexplicable that shines out in the strange, dark, wintery season and screams out to hell's entrapment, " _I'm not yours!_ "

Maybe, dare he think, it was a glimmer of hope?

Harry exhaled, and then asked steadily, "So…did my mum take you ice-skating like she talked about in the card?"

"She wasn't…one to let me off the hook with such things…easily," Snape admitted, his eyes glittering at the memory.

"Was it fun?" the boy inquired.

"Being browbeaten into enjoying myself by an infuriatingly determined little red-head…?"

He smiled ever so slightly, thinking back to how he'd kept trying to back out, and how she'd not taken no for an answer and practically pulled him onto the ice.

 _"Don't be such a scardy-cat, Sev! You'll do fine! Don't worry…I'm good at this, and if you start to fall, I'll catch you…"_

 ** _She'll catch me._**

"Yes, I suppose…it was…what you said… _fun_." The word seemed ill-fitted to his tongue, but Harry smiled anyway, and then reached out a hand to help him stand up. This time, Snape cautiously accepted the aid. But even when he had gotten himself upright, he found the smaller hand still clutching his for a long moment. As much as he thought he would feel unnerved by it, he found himself instead letting it happen. Maybe it was some small way the child had of revealing the hug had not just been for his father after all. Whatever it was, it felt warm…it felt right.

 _Oh, Lily, is this the way you catch me now…?_

He gazed down at the boy, with some uncomfortableness, as if trying to decide what to do next. And he realized, just then, that he was looking for signs of either father or mother in him…no, he was just looking at him. And he muttered quietly, "I was…thinking of taking my cat with me for this term, you know, up to Hogwarts." He lifted an eyebrow in question. "Do you think she would be safe from Gryffindor hoodlums?"

"Of course she would," Harry assured. "You don't honestly think Ron and Hermione and the gang are the type to beat up animals, do you?"

"Even if they belong to someone who has been none too merciful towards them?" He paused and admitted, "Even…unfair towards them at times?"

Harry shrugged. "It's just not who they are."

The man eyed the snow for a long moment. "You can…spend take care of the cat if you wish, after school hours." He scuffled his boot in the icy patch.

Harry swallowed something swelling in his throat. "Professor Snape…"

"Mind you, I'm not going soft on you, Potter," he warned. "Back up there, it's back to where we were, and don't you forget it…"

"Right."

"You're still a bloody irritation, with that marauding chip on your shoulder, and I highly doubt any good can come of you…"

"Sure."

"So mark me well, you best not cross me, Potter, for I don't take any mouthing off or slacking down, and your golden boy status will not protect you in my classroom…"

"Naturally."

"So…you just remember it."

"Yep."

They were both silent again for a long time.

"Professor?"

"Yes?"

"Think there might be time to put out that birdseed and peanut butter before we leave?"

Snape exhaled, then nodded. He coaxed the boy forward with a hand to his shoulder, and there was a rough geniality in the act. He hadn't intended it to be as familiar as it came off, but Harry sensed it, and felt quite warm all over.

"Come on then, boy," Snape sighed, looking east to the fresh wintery morn. "Let's go home."

THE END


	9. Lyrics: Sing of the Wild Wood

Sing o the wild wood, the green holly  
The silent river and barren tree  
The humble creatures that no man sees  
Sing O the wild wood

A weary journey one winter's night  
No hope of shelter, no rest in sight  
Who was the creature that bore Mary?  
A simple donkey

And when they came into Bethl'hem town  
They found a stable to lay them down  
For their companions that Christmas night  
An ox and an ass

And then an angel came down to earth  
To bear the news of the Saviour's birth  
The first to marvel were shepherds poor  
And sheep with their lambs

Sing O the wild wood...

~ Anonymous English Christmas Carol


End file.
